Most children’s days are full of freedom, laughter and play.
But this has only hapepened for fleeting moments in the life of our own Billi-Jo Murray.
The brave seven-year-old has been fighting for her life since she was just 10 months old. Her body has been riddled with cancer and her world has evolved around ongoing, sometimes agonising and debilitating, treatments ever since her diagnosis.
Thankfully, in the past few months she has gone into remission and has been well enough to return to Beechwood Public School and play, giggle and learn with her friends.
But it may not be for long, says her loving mother Terri Townsend.
There’s only a five per cent chance Billi will stay well and, if she gets sick again, “it’s worst case scenario for a cancer patient”.
But for now, it’s time for Billi to live life to its fullest.
It’s her dream to see the Outback Spectacular show, swim with dolphins and visit every fun theme park she can, whilst she’s feeling well enough.
And we need your help to make her dreams come true.
To raise money for Billi, Tommy’s by the Beach, in conjunction with Port Macquarie Rotary Club, is holding a fundraising night of dining, entertainment and a charity auction on Saturday, November 5.
Residents are invited to come along for such an inspiring cause.
Or maybe there’s another way you can help?
Read Billi’s moving and truly emotional journey and see what an amazing, resilient and courageous child you will be supporting — all in her mother’s loving words.
Story: Terri Townsend, the mother of beautiful Billi-Jo Murray
Billi-Jo Murray was born on November 5, 2003 a perfectly healthy baby girl.
At 10 months of age Billi was diagnosed with cancer – bilateral wilms tumour.
She had high blood pressure and was very irritable.
She started chemotherapy within the week for an expected 12 months.
After two months of chemo the tumours had shrunk enough to remove her left kidney and around 20 per cent of the right one.
She then continued treatment weekly for the next 10 months and was in remission.
She was in remission for 2.5 years when she relapsed the first time in February, 2007.
After removing more tumours from the remaining kidney we did six months’ chemo and scans revealed all were gone, so we ceased chemo and assumed remission again.
But a follow-up scan six weeks later revealed yet another relapse and so we resumed chemo and started to plan a stem cell transplant.
This involves high dose hormones to make her white cells abnormally high so that we could go to Sydney and have her cells collected and frozen for when we were ready to transplant them back to her.
While in Sydney for the first attempt at stem cell collection Billi spiked a fever and we went to emergency at Sydney Children’s Hospital. Her temperature went as high as 41.3 degrees Celsius, which is very, very serious.
Her blood pressure was dangerously low.
She was in a really bad way and, after litres of fluid and two blood transfusions, she was transferred to children’s intensive care and was fighting to stay alive. After two days on a drug to regulate her blood pressure, we started to wean her from it and her blood cultures revealed she had three different bacterial infections in her blood.
She remained in the intensive care unit for another two days and was then put in the high dependency children’s ward before she was allowed back to her nurses and hospital in Newcastle.
After a couple of weeks to fully recover, we would again attempt stem cell collection.
I must say, I really don’t know how my baby survived that week.
I have never been so scared and so able to stay awake for days on end to just watch her sleep and try to recover for me.
She is stronger than anyone I have ever met.
The transplant took place on July 13, 2009.
This involved a very high dose of chemo for three days which depletes the body of every cell and is life threatening for the patient.
Once the chemo has taken effect the cells are given through the form of a blood transfusion.
We continuously burnt oils for two weeks because Billi smelt so bad, which is very common during transplant.
She was in complete isolation for four weeks on the ward and then we went back to the unit at Ronald McDonald House and continued isolation for another four weeks before we were allowed home.
Throughout 2009 she was fed through a nasogastric tube as she would not eat on treatment and was on a lot of supplements.
She was down to 17kg.
Sometimes she would go weeks and not eat a thing; only drink water.
She was on the feeding machine 16 hours of the day as she had to be fed very slowly or she would vomit.
Billi-Jo relapsed again on November 8, 2010.
The tumours did not, however, return to the kidney this time.
They are in her abdominal cavity – there were three.
Her surgeon Dr Raj Kumar removed a 13cm mass but the other two were too high a risk to remove surgically.
So we started more highdose chemo and she had two weeks of radiation on her abdomen which will have its own side effects later in life for Billi.
As she has limited kidney function, it will most likely cause her to go into renal failure in three or more years and she will not grow as she should have.
She has had very slow recovery from treatment at the moment, as her bone marrow is exhausted due to all the past chemo she has had.
After another long stay in hospital and Ronny Mac House in Newcastle we were allowed home for Christmas – yay!
But our poor baby was again admitted in February, 2011 with peritonitis – an awful infection of her abdomen.
This caused more complications, as Billi had to be put into J1 (Isolation Unit) in Newcastle for another four weeks to recover, so she could have her last bout of high dosage chemo.
It took her a while to start eating but she got there again!
Billi was given her last dose of chemo a few months ago and did really well getting through this.
Although so far all is well, we can only hope and pray that she does not relapse again, as the doctors say her little body will not be able to handle any more treatment.
This is our girl’s story – quite amazing!
I must add that, in between all this, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl whom Billi adores.
Billi-Jo Murray is one amazing strong little cowgirl, one of those kids who has an immense effect on everyone she meets.
She is also very selfless.
Because of this, we want to give her the world but is very hard to do when only one of us can work and I have to care for her as a full-time commitment (not that I would ever have it any other way).
We are all so proud of her.
She never ceases to amaze us.
All we do now is pray and try to live life as normally as possible.
She has many things she wants to do – and I will do everything in my power to do them for her.
