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.
