{"id":7048,"date":"2018-09-10T15:46:30","date_gmt":"2018-09-10T05:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/?p=7048"},"modified":"2018-09-10T16:24:45","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T06:24:45","slug":"harrison-pennicott-starts-five-months-of-treatment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/harrison-pennicott-starts-five-months-of-treatment\/","title":{"rendered":"Harrison Pennicott starts five months of treatment to beat scleroderma"},"content":{"rendered":"

WATCH out medical world, Harrison Pennicott is ready to smash scleroderma.<\/p>\n

The six-year-old Warranwood boy entered The Royal Children\u2019s Hospital yesterday to begin a gruelling five months of treatment doctors hope will save his life.<\/p>\n

Harrison is the youngest person in Australia diagnosed with the rare skin and auto-immune disease and will undergo a bone-marrow transplant and chemotherapy to effectively grow a new immune system.<\/p>\n

He faces six days of surgery and treatment, then five weeks in isolation being fed through a tube in his nose.<\/p>\n

If all goes well, he\u2019ll spend the rest of spring, Christmas and the start of summer recovering at home without any visitors.<\/p>\n

Harrison finished school for the year last week and was sad to say goodbye to his friends.\"\"<\/p>\n

But he told Maroondah Leader he hoped to be back for the start of term one.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ll put the medicine in me, put some hoses in my nose and my heart, and take my hair off and I\u2019ll sleep there for six nights,\u201d Harrison said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then I\u2019ll go back to home and back to school and play footy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harrison\u2019s parents Jamie and Leesa decided on the radical course of treatment after their specialist, Angela Cox, met other doctors at a conference in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n

Ms Pennicott said the specialists recommended they \u201c100 per cent go for it\u201d after viewing details of Harrison\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just want to get it done, we want to move forward, we want him to get better,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of confidence from the doctors, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re feeding off,\u201d Mr Pennicott said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the most positive we\u2019ve had our medical team in the last three years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harrison might also get a visit in hospital from his special mate \u2014 Essendon Football Club captain Dyson Heppell.<\/p>\n

The duo combined for the Get Behind The Beard fundraiser in June, with Heppell shaving off his beard to raise more than $60,000 for Scleroderma Victoria.<\/p>\n

Heppell, whose grandmother died from the disease, called Harrison on Monday night to wish him luck before heading in for surgery.<\/p>\n

The AFL star has kept in regular contact with Harrison \u2014 inviting him into the Bombers\u2019 rooms after games and surprising him on a visit to Melbourne\u2019s SeaLife Aquarium.<\/p>\n

The family are planning a huge party and possibly a trip to Fiji or Vegas once Harrison recovers.<\/p>\n

But Harrison only has one thing on his mind \u2014 big brother Miller has been put on notice for a backyard footy showdown once he\u2019s fighting fit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll smash it (treatment), then I\u2019ll smash my brother in footy, and kick a goal.<\/p>\n

Words Kiel Egging, photo James Ross – Maroondah Leader<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WATCH out medical world, Harrison Pennicott is ready to smash scleroderma. The six-year-old Warranwood boy entered The Royal Children\u2019s Hospital yesterday to begin a gruelling five months of treatment doctors hope will save his life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":7049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8971,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7048","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\/7048","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\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7048"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7330,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7048\/revisions\/7330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}