Jacinta lives in Perth, Western Australia, with husband Matt, Jack, eight and her two daughters Daisy, six and Charlotte, two.  

Daisy was four and a half months old when she was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia. 

A month before Daisy was diagnosed, Jacinta noticed she wasn’t drinking as much of her bottle and wasn’t gaining enough weight.  

“She was gaining 40 or 50 grams a week, and they [nurses] liked to see 150 to 200 grams a week.” 

Jacinta tried smaller, more frequent feeds and took Daisy back to the nurse a week before Christmas, where they saw that she had gained 500 grams. Jacinta initially thought this was a lot, considering Daisy wasn’t putting on this much weight before, but was told it was fine. 

The night of Boxing Day, a family member noticed blue bruises on the tops of Daisy’s feet, which the family put down to Jack playing a little rough with his sister.  

At around 2am on New Year’s Day, Jacinta and Matt were given the devastating news that Daisy had leukaemia. 

When Daisy was diagnosed, the family were thrown straight into hospital life. 

“The majority of the time, I stayed by myself while Matt, who had taken about three weeks off work, was at home with Jack. He came to visit us every day. Then they told us five weeks, but we ended up staying eight.” 

At one point, Jacinta and Matt thought we were going to lose Daisy. She couldn’t breathe, and she was rushed to theatre.  

“She had a lot of fluid on her lungs and her lung had collapsed. Then she had a few allergic reactions, so doctors had to change a few of her medications. She was behind in her development because she was stuck in a cot for a lot of the time. It was really hard to try to get her in and out with tubes and stuff all connected to her.” 

While in hospital with Daisy, Jacinta struggled with being alone.  

“I spent a lot of time just by myself. Matt had gone back to work, so he was trying to juggle coming to see us at the hospital, being home enough for Jack, still working, still doing everything around the house, remembering to go to the shop and get things we needed and bring things from home into the hospital that we needed.” 

Jacinta’s mum and sister visited the most and stayed a few times in hospital with Daisy, so Jacinta could come home for Jack’s birthday. 

“A Redkite social worker at the hospital gave us the Red Bag. That’s all we had. We used all things in the bag for the first week or so until we figured out what we needed to bring in from home. We used the Red Bag every time we had to come into the hospital.” 

The family accessed the Redkite Book Club.  

“We got some books for Jack to try to help explain to him what was happening and why Daisy was losing her hair and those kinds of things.” 

“The Redkite social worker set up the financial assistance up for us and then if we needed anything we went to her, and she would put it through for us. When we got home, we did it through the myRedkite portal.” 

“We did get grocery vouchers, to help with food and necessities. While Daisy was having oral chemo at home, we needed all those extra things, like extra sanitizer and masks and all those things from when COVID started. The vouchers were a great help with those extras we hadn’t factored into our budget.” 

To put a bit of fun into the long days, Daisy enjoyed some music therapy.  

Daisy and Jack still have some strong emotions about Daisy’s illness. They are receiving children’s counselling from Redkite social workers to help them heal.  

“Jack is only realising now what Daisy’s cancer meant and what actually happened. The counselling is helping him talk about his feelings.”  

Daisy still hates the hospital. Every time she has an appointment she screams and makes up excuses not to go.  

Children’s counselling is “helping her overcome her anxiety and trauma, especially around trips to the hospital”. 

While Daisy does have health issues as a result of cancer and cancer treatments, she is out of treatment and back at school now.  

She’s started ballet to help build her muscle strength. Most days she can be found outside playing (and fighting) with Jack, their little sister Charlotte, and the family’s two dogs. She wants to be a vet when she grows up.