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In the thick of adversity, beautiful friendships between patients and parents are being made daily at The Royal Children\u2019s Hospital, Melbourne.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In the thick of adversity, beautiful friendships between patients and parents are being made daily at The Royal Children\u2019s Hospital, Melbourne.<\/p>\n
Julianne and Houston Larcart (11) and Claire and Adam Trott (2) had their worlds collide when both boys were admitted to the RCH with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) just days apart in March.<\/p>\n
Despite their age gap, the two boys connected almost instantly and now have a bond like that of brothers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted a little brother,\u201d says Houston of Adam.<\/p>\n
And the feeling\u2019s mutual for two-year-old Adam, with mum Claire saying he quickly felt safe and secure in \u2018Houstys\u2019, as he calls him, company.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he looked to Houston as someone he could have fun with who\u2019s not a parent or an adult. It was really nice to see how comfortable Adam was with Houston and how much joy he was getting out of spending time with him. Every morning, Adam would sit outside Houston\u2019s room waiting to be let in, that\u2019s how much he adores him,\u201d says Claire.<\/p>\n
The everlasting friendship isn\u2019t confined to the boys, Claire and Julianne, too, have formed a great friendship. And despite Claire and Adam\u2019s relocation to Brisbane in June, the mums still chat daily.<\/p>\n
\u201cLife on the ward can be isolating and you could go crazy having no one to talk to when you\u2019re here 24\/7, which is why my connection with Claire was so important. We\u2019re all being taken out of our normal environments, and, for me, Claire helped me to laugh because if you don\u2019t laugh, you\u2019ll cry. She is a beautiful person and has been a great support,\u201d says Julianne.<\/p>\n
With Claire\u2019s family three hours away, and living in Adam\u2019s room on the Kookaburra ward, Julianne would often make meals for Claire.<\/p>\n
And because Adam was so comfortable with Houston and Julianne, it meant Claire could nip away every now and then.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a huge help knowing I could take an opportunity to head off the ward for five minutes, knowing Adam was so comfortable with Houston and Julianne,\u201d says Claire.<\/p>\n
The boys\u2019 favourite activities were hide-and-seek, playing games on the iPad and playing with balls and blocks, and it was well-known on Kookaburra that if one wasn\u2019t in their own room, they\u2019d be in the other\u2019s room.<\/p>\n
They came into the hospital together, and both boys look like they will be discharged around the same time in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cCancer is a rollercoaster ride, we don\u2019t know whether Houston is done with cancer or whether it will return but we are hoping for a happy and healthy future,\u201d Julianne said.<\/p>\n
A trip to Brisbane is on the cards for Julianne and Houston once both boys are well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite their age gap, two boys on the RCH cancer ward connected almost instantly and now have a bond like that of brothers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":6221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8971,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6211"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6223,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6211\/revisions\/6223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}