Christmas Appeal 2023
Your kind support this Christmas will help make the tough times a little more bearable for our little heroes.
By giving a generous donation, you are helping a sick child like River and giving them the best chance to be with their families this Christmas. Thank you.
Short Story
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Make a Donation
- €25
€25 could help fund a range of fun, diverting and therapeutic events and activities in CHI hospitals, like the Saturday Club in CHI at Temple Street, and CHI at Crumlin’s Giggle Fund.
- €50
€50 could help fund ground-breaking paediatric research, giving extra hope to sick children and their families.
- €100
€100 could contribute to the cost of buying life-saving equipment like incubators and heart-rate monitors, ensuring every child gets the very best care.
- Custom DonationOther...
€30 could help fund a range of fun, diverting and therapeutic events and activities in CHI hospitals, like the Saturday Club in CHI at Temple Street, and CHI at Crumlin’s Giggle Fund.
€50 could help fund ground-breaking paediatric research, giving extra hope to sick children and their families.
€100 could contribute to the cost of buying life-saving equipment like incubators and heart-rate monitors, ensuring every child gets the very best care.
This Christmas, your support can help give children like River the very best chance in Children's Health Ireland at Crumlin, Temple Street, Tallaght & Connolly.
River’s Story
My son River was born a healthy child. He was our third child, and my husband and I would call him our little minx. He was always up to mischief, full of energy, bounding around the place. He’s always loved the outdoors — running around with the dogs or collecting eggs from our chickens. That was him for the first three years of his life.
Things started to change around the time he started pre-school. I picked him up one day, September last year, and he had a seizure in the back seat of the car. It was all very scary — we called an ambulance and he spent about a week in hospital, eventually being diagnosed with epilepsy.
But despite the diagnosis and the medication, his seizures kept coming. They were more and more frequent. Then came other symptoms — a twitch in his right leg, problems walking, loss of speech, difficulty recognizing me and his dad. We began to suspect it was more than just epilepsy.
River kept getting worse and eventually he was transferred to Temple Street — he had six seizures in the back of the ambulance on the way there. Once we arrived, the team examined him closely and they gave him a working diagnosis of a rare brain condition called Rasmussen’s encephalitis.
We were glad to have a diagnosis, but dismayed to learn there was no cure for the condition. The only available treatment was brain surgery — removing the affected half of River’s brain.
My husband and I did all the research we could. We were willing to take River to China or Texas — we’d have taken him anywhere in the world to get him treatment for Rasmussen’s but everything brought us back to Temple Street. It just so happened that we had the best of the best, right here on our doorstep.
I just knew as soon as we were in the door of Temple Street everything was going to be OK — even though obviously it wasn’t OK, our child was really, really sick. There’s just a feeling up there, everybody is just so parent-centric and then this team was formed around River. It was ‘OK there’s ten people here in this room and we are all Team River.’
The surgery sounded huge but it wasn’t a hard decision to make, to go ahead with it. River’s quality of life was deteriorating — at times he was having seizures every three minutes — so we knew it was the right thing to do.
River’s brain surgery lasted 11 or 12 hours, and afterwards we knew that the hard work was just beginning. His recovery was a long process, but every few days he’d turn a little corner, or he might say a few words. He might recognise us, or have a joke with his dad. Over a period of weeks the right half of his brain began taking over. It was absolutely incredible.
I have no words for the staff and the care at Temple Street — the management and the leadership and everything we experienced on that ward in particular. I always felt I could go out into the corridor and say “I’m so sorry to bother you…” Nothing was ever a bother. Even after we left, I knew if anything happened we could just go back to Temple Street and everything would be OK again.
River loved the playroom — where he could play with water, or mess around with sand. That was his happy place. Not only did it give him a bit of normality, it gave us as parents a break. He also loved the music therapy with Lyndsey, who made a huge effort to learn his favourite songs! At Christmas they decorated the halls and brought Santa and the elves in to visit the children. It was just so special.
Today, he’s making a strong recovery. We think by Christmas we’ll have him back walking again. His speech has come along immensely and he still has the most beautiful minxy personality he had pre-surgery. He’s full of fun. He loves a joke, he’s back to joking with his Dad again. They have a great relationship. This Christmas, we’re not asking for a whole lot, except for time at home together.
Before River got sick, I’d hear of fundraising for Temple Street and wouldn’t really understand where the money went. But when you’re in Temple Street you see the physical things that make a difference to River’s journey — there are so many things, from the playroom to the parents accommodation, to the CT scanner to the practical things that River made use of.
That team in Temple Street kept us together. People would say to us “I just don’t know how you do it” and I would say, we’re being propped up here, we’re being carried along and we definitely could not have done it without all the support.
– Susan, River’s Mam