A LOCAL grandmother, who is herself recovering from a stroke, has appealed to the public for donations to help fund expenses for her daughter, who was recently diagnosed with a rare form of brain and spine cancer.
Louise Whitehead said her family had been left devastated by her 31-year-old daughter Rachael’s recent diagnosis.
“As a family, we are not short on love, but as you can imagine medical costs and the like will be very difficult as Rachael continues on her long road of treatment,” Ms Whitehead told the Limerick Post.
The Clonlara grandmother, who had to retire from nursing after suffering a stroke five years ago, asked people across Limerick to help with a donation of whatever they can to a fundraising page set up by herself and her daughter’s partner, Alan Kennedy, on gofundme.com/f/princess-rachael.
Ms Whitehead said her daughter is due to begin six weeks of intense radiotherapy at the Bons Secours Hospital in Cork, this coming Monday (December 16).
Rachael Whitehead had just started working as a midwife when she was given her diagnosis after she attended hospital when one of her legs became painful and numb.
The young mother to six-year-old Leo was immediately transferred to Cork University Hospital where she underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumour on the base of her brain. However, doctors also discovered a number of tumours on her spine.
A worried Louise asked people to “send my girl positivity and strength”.
“It’s a very rare sarcoma, the doctors actually don’t know what sarcoma it is, so it is full steam ahead now with radiotherapy, five days a week for six weeks,” Ms Whitehead told the Limerick Post.
“Rachael had a craniotomy and had a tumour removed from her cerebellum. She also had a laminectomy, which is surgery on her thoracic spine to remove part of a tumour from there.
“I really don’t know how she is talking to us, she had the back surgery last Wednesday and she had the brain surgery last Thursday. She is amazing, a walking absolutely fantastic rock of a miracle of a girl,” Ms Whitehead said, becoming emotional.
“She has a large tumour in her thoracic spine and she has three further down her spine that we know of at the moment. The prognosis is they don’t know what type of sarcoma it is or how it will react to radiotherapy.
“Me being a nurse, and Rachael being a midwife, we are stubborn, and we are like bulls when we get something in our head, so we have been researching a place in Germany which does specialised treatment for sarcomas and I’ve already spoken to Rachael’s consultant about it, he is going to send off her scans to them, and if we have to go there, we will.
“There is no such thing as giving up at the first hurdle if radiotherapy doesn’t work, but we are going to stay confident that it is going to work and it is going to kill the sarcoma).”
Louise said that the reason she and her daughter’s partner set up the online fundraising platform is that “Rachael is not yet entitled to social welfare. Because she was training as a nurse, she has no stamps, and she is not entitled to any pay from work because she had not enough time worked up as she had been on probation period when she started off.”
“We don’t want any stress or financial worries for Rachael and we know there is going to be a lot of expenses involved in her treatment.
“She is going to have to stay below in Cork in a hotel for five nights every week for the next six weeks, there’s petrol money up and down, there’s food, expenses, etc.”
Ms Whitehead said she wanted to thank everyone who had already donated to the fund, raising over €17,000 so far.
She also thanked surgeons in Cork and the Bru Columbanus charity who provided accommodation for the family when Rachael underwent surgery.