peter
“My husband and I lived a very happy life on a beautiful farm however, with the arrival of our daughter, Julie our lives were transformed into a real fairy tale. She was well known as a smiley baby, no matter where we were, she would draw people to her with her smile. She loved life and truly enjoyed every moment of it. I remember when she was 17 months old, just after she started to walk, it was raining so we were kicking football inside when she started vomiting without stop. It was so sudden; we took her to the hospital immediately. The doctors thought it was a tummy bug but a week later they did three different tests. Two of them came back clear but the last one turned everything upside-down forever. Our little girl had a brain tumour. Our lives transformed once again, this time filled with pain and struggles. She was put on all sorts of medications and treatments, she had to get an operation with a 15-20% chance of survival. She was on extremely intensive chemotherapy for a year but she just took it all. She didn’t complain and eventually got better. She was nearly three when she got her ‘all clear’ and we had two wonderful years as a family. In her first year in school around Christmas she started to get sick again and after so much trying, she died at eight-years-of-age. A couple of years later, still reeling from losing her, my husband got diagnosed with cancer and died after a short illness. Before his death we had discussed selling our farm. At the time I was a principal in a school so I didn’t need the money. I wanted to use it to keep their memories alive, and to help children and their families fighting this horrendous illness. I decided to invest all the money to set up the Julie Wren Children’s Cancer Support Centre. We created some wonderful projects, including the funding of Olive’s position and The Julie Wren Complementary Therapy Room. But as always, they need people like the Childhood Cancer Foundation to keep research going.”