{"id":9476,"date":"2022-04-04T14:58:36","date_gmt":"2022-04-04T04:58:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/?p=9476"},"modified":"2022-04-08T10:52:49","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T00:52:49","slug":"the-smiling-faces-your-donations-are-helping-meet-aliyana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/the-smiling-faces-your-donations-are-helping-meet-aliyana\/","title":{"rendered":"Aliyana is a blooming marvel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Words:<\/strong> Brigid O\u2019Connell
\nPhoto:<\/strong> Alex Coppel<\/p>\n

It has taken daily watering and hard work, but the tiny seeds of positivity and hope that Aliyana Mimmo and her family have planted are blooming.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Almost a year after being diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, and about to finish the most intensive<\/p>\n

\"\"
Aliyana takes a break from her cancer treatment to water the flowers outside. Picture: Alex Coppel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

treatment, the 10-year-old hopes to start ticking things off her ever-growing \u201cafter cancer to-do list\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dinner at a restaurant, a trip to a water park and a weekend away with her mother D\u2019Anna are first.<\/p>\n

One thing the pair feel they have control over is their attitude each day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel what we need to feel, when we need to feel it,\u201d Ms Mimmo said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe has every right to cry, scream and get angry \u2013 and we have those moments. Then I say tomorrow is a new day. We just make fun of everything and take every opportunity to have a joke, a laugh or a dance.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the rest of her family recovered from a virus last May, Aliyana\u2019s cough persisted for weeks.<\/p>\n

A trip to The Royal Children\u2019s Hospital (RCH) emergency department revealed it was a result of cancer cells clumping together to block her airway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t go in and look at her for an hour after the doctors told me, because she looked so well,\u201d Ms Mimmo said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd yet they were telling me we\u2019d be moved to Intensive Care Unit that day and we were starting chemo that afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n

While her parents were upfront about her leukaemia diagnosis and what lay ahead with treatment, children this age can Google and it was Aliyana who told her parents that she had cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s non-stop with questions. She\u2019s asked me: \u2018Is what I have terminal? And what would have happened if you hadn\u2019t taken me to the hospital that day?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After about 110 nights in hospital over the past year \u2013 many of them unexpected admissions for temperate spikes or low platelet counts \u2013 next week she finishes one of the extreme phases of treatment.<\/p>\n

Then, after a two-month break, Aliyana will start the final 18 months of maintenance chemotherapy \u2013 a comparatively lower-dose course during which her hair will regrow and allow her to return to school.<\/p>\n

Thanks to your generous support, we can make a difference to children like Aliyana and support world-leading care at the RCH. Click here to donate today to the Good Friday Appeal.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Almost a year after being diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, Aliyana hopes to start ticking things off her ever-growing \u201cafter cancer to-do list\u201d. Click here to read her story. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":9477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8971,7198,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-good-friday-appeal","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9476","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\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9476"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9501,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9476\/revisions\/9501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}