Excitable and bubbly, Ella loves to chat and tell stories. She loves swimming and camping and never turns down a trip to the spray park. She’s also living with a rare genetic condition that affects her heart and liver and causes her physical discomfort. Daily medication helps to slow the progression of her disease, but she has few treatment options and will require more intervention as she grows. Despite this, Ella had big dreams of meeting all her favourite Disney characters, eating ice cream every day and “riding every ride possible”.
For Ella and her family, the wish trip was the perfect opportunity to forget about appointments and side effects, and just have fun together. “Every single day I thought we couldn’t possibly have more fun that the day before but I was wrong,” said Ella’s mom, Lisa. “Everything was fun, magical and exiting.”
“Ella’s wish gave our family a new focus,” Lisa continues. “We had an opportunity to connect and be together outside of the medical setting. Ella didn’t complain about taking her meds or about her symptoms at all on the trip. We felt like a normal family.”
And after returning from their trip, the feeling stayed. “We feel refreshed and ready to take on whatever the next medical challenge will be.”
A child is diagnosed with a critical illness every 20 minutes. Hope is essential for these children, and its life-changing power is unlocked when wishes, like Ella’s, are granted. It is thanks to the generous support from our donor community, that we can continue to transform lives, one wish at a time.
