Author: Lorraine

On Saturday 13th July at Tesco Stores on Queen Street, fire fighters from Great Harwood hosted their annual charity car wash.  Shoppers were treated to the Crew washing their car for a donation to support The Firefighter’s Charity and Milly’s Smiles charity.  The event was extremely well supported, it was a very hot day and the crew did a brilliant job in the heat.

We are always eager to know how people have heard about Milly’s Smiles and their reasons for supporting us, Crew Manager Jonathon Ford gave us this answer;

“Great Harwood Fire Station are always looking at how we can support local charities and community groups in whatever way we can, with The Firefighter’s Charity kindly allowing Fire Stations, such as ours, to the use their ‘National Car Wash’ event as a platform to promote, raise awareness and raise funds for other charities in addition to raising funds for their own cause.

 The crew at Great Harwood became aware of Milly’s Smiles and the amazing work the charity does following the daughter of one of our Fire Service colleagues at Leyland Fire Station, receiving one of Milly’s Bags when their daughter was admitted to hospital following a diagnosis with leukaemia and learned about how it made a big difference to the family, as well as many other families, at such a difficult time and we wanted to help the charity raise funds towards providing Milly’s Bags to children diagnosed with cancer that have been admitted to hospital.

Once we found out the Charity was based in Great Harwood, the crew were keen to work with the charity and saw our Annual Car Wash event as a perfect opportunity to do just that.”

A huge thank you to the Crew for all their hard work on such a hot day, and everyone who had their car washed, and for their generous donations.

Earlier this month we were invited to meet the team at Primark in Burnley.  The staff had nominated Milly’s Smiles as their charity for the year.  We were thrilled to meet everyone and to listen to their brilliant ideas for fundraising for us.  We look forward to working with them over the coming 12 months.

As Milly’s Smiles continues to grow, we are lucky enough to be asked to speak about our charity to companies, groups and schools about the support we give to families, whose child has been newly diagnosed with a cancer related illness.

As we expand, we need more volunteers to join us, to help promote our charity.

These events will be at various times, both during the day, evenings and weekends.

Today has been a heartwarming day, I was invited back to St Joseph’s R.C. Primary School in Shaw, by their year 6 teacher Steve Hill. Along with his class, Steve has been supporting and fundraising for Milly’s Smiles over the last school year. Today I was presented with a cheque for £1750 and as an extra surprise each year 6 pupil gave me a gorgeous rainbow elephant.

Words aren’t always enough to express how grateful and thankful I am for people’s kindness and generosity, without it we wouldn’t be making the difference that we do on a daily basis.

After holding our Rainbow Ball at the beautiful venue that is Mitton Hall earlier this year, we were thrilled to be chosen as their charity, for their Super Car Sunday.

Over £1250 was raised for us at this exciting event, which came from donations from food sales and also the generosity of people donating via our charity bucket.

A huge thank you goes to James Place for their amazing hospitality and to everyone who donated to us.  Your kindness and generosity allows us to continue to fund more Milly Bags to Ward 84 and Ward 3B.  We are lucky enough to be making a difference every day.

Sunday was a great day for Milly’s Smiles.  Be Strong’s Rick and Rachel organised the day, which was a challenge to walk as many miles as possible in 12 hours.   The event began at 6.30am when the first walkers set off.  Each loop of the park was a mile long, and walkers were able to log each mile with a sticker to allow them to keep track.  The sun shone, spirits were high and the park was filled from early morning till 6.30pm with people supporting Milly’s Smiles and taking on the challenge.

We were lucky enough to be able to meet the walkers there and we were in awe at their dedication and commitment, many people accomplished personal achievements and this was so lovely to see.  We had over 276 walkers take part (some people joined in when they saw the stand in the park, which we love) and a grand total of 1802 miles were walked that day.

We thank every single person who came down and supported Milly’s Smiles, you all helped raise awareness forour charity and on top of that you raised a massive £1087!

We have had a busy week putting together Milly Bags for both Ward 84 at Royal Manchester and Ward 3B at Alder Hey Children’s Hospitals.  We supply each ward with 15 Bags each visit, which will last the wards approximately 6 weeks.  Sadly that’s a lot of children being diagnosed with a  cancer related illness every week, and that is just in our local region.

To make up 15 Milly Bags takes approximately 3-4 hours, however, we are lucky enough to have volunteers that will come and make the bags for us, which helps us out tremendously and for which we are very grateful.

On Friday we had volunteers take 15 Milly Bags over to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, where they were met by Alan, who is one of the Health Care Assistants.  Since October 2018 we have provided the ward with 60 Milly Bags.

Then on Tuesday our Dynamic Delivery Team drove to Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital where they were met with one of the play leaders – Lorraine – who took delivery of the Milly Bags.  It is always nice to see staff who knew Milly, Lorraine spent time with Milly on the roof top garden when she was getting ready to be discharged from the Bone Marrow Unit, encouraging her to enjoy the fresh air and exercise after being confirmed to a small room for the last few weeks.  Since our first delivery to Ward 84 in March 2016 we have taken 348 Milly Bags.  We are honoured to be allowed to make a difference to all these families.

Taking the Milly Bags to the Children’s Hospital is always so bittersweet, somewhere within the North West there are 30 families who are about to have their world turned upside down, when they are told their child has a cancer related illness.

It is so important to us at Milly’s Smiles to be able to continue to help these children and their families, we know firsthand how it feels to hear those words ‘I’m sorry but your child has cancer’,  we know the feelings, the anger, the upset, the pure disbelief that this can actually be happening.  So to be able to make even the tiniest difference at the worst time imaginable is a privilege.  This is why we do what we do, and we thank everyone who allows us to make that difference, without support from so many people this would not be possible.

During Milly’s treatment she enrolled in the Beads of Courage Programme which is designed to provide support for children and teenagers undergoing treatments for serious illnesses.  At every stage of cancer treatment, children receive a new Bead of Courage. The beads join together to form (often long) physical representations of their recovery, resulting in a record of every hospital trip and treatment on their courageous journey. The Beads of Courage help to decrease illness-related distress, and increase positive coping strategies to support children and their families.

The Beads are also something tangible that a child can use, to tell family and friends about their experience during treatment. They also help explain what has happened to them whilst they have been in hospital.

With each procedure or milestone in their treatment, they get a special bead. Each bead is their way of saying “this isn’t easy, but I did it”.

Every child is given the Beads of Courage bead colour chart, along with a length of string and beads that spell out their first name.

Then, colourful beads, each representing a different treatment, are given to the child by their professional health care provider, as determined by the bead guide. During the course of their treatment, they are also given “Act of Courage” beads.  A few examples of these beads include:

• Yellow bead: an overnight stay in hospital
• White bead: a course of chemotherapy
• Blue bead: visits to the clinic
• Glow-in-the-dark bead: a course of radiation treatment
• Glass bead: an act of courage
• Special star bead: a special accomplishment
• Purple heart bead: completion of treatment!

Deciding what to do with Milly’s Beads of Courage was quite difficult; for the last 3 years they have been in her bedroom in the bag that we kept them in.  After copious amounts of research, I decided to have them made into a tree, and framed so that they can be displayed properly.  Milly had so many beads that they had to be made into 2 trees!

The first frame in the picture are the beads from diagnosis to post bone marrow transplant… the second frame are from the time Milly relapsed to when we lost her 💔

The third picture is the list of beads that are available for each treatment/procedure that children endure.

The final picture is Milly proudly wearing her beads after ringing the End of Treatment Bell, just before she was discharged home following her bone marrow transplant.

These beads speak so much of courage, determination and love, and chart every single step of Milly’s cancer journey- I love them and they mean the world to me, but more importantly I’m sure Milly would love them too❤️🌈🎗

Thank you to Natasha at Rainbow Trees for looking after the beads and displaying them so perfectly.