The parents you help us support are our unsung heroes. Please give this tax time so they can be there for their children.
Those first few minutes, hours and days after you find out your child is seriously ill or injured are some of the most stressful in any parent’s life. Many of our families, just like Anunta’s, have arrived at hospital not knowing they won’t be heading home.
When Anthony, Doungnead and their daughter Anunta had travelled to hospital to treat Anunta’s bone cyst, the last thing they expected was to find oncologists waiting for them. Anunta’s ‘cyst’ was actually a sarcoma, they said, a cancer of the bone. They were told the best way to deal with this type of cancer was to do an amputation.
Aged just 11, their little girl was about to lose part of her leg, before undergoing chemotherapy to save her life.
Doungnead and Anthony were completely unprepared for this sudden diagnosis. They’d brought nothing with them – not a change of clothes, not a toothbrush. They were in complete shock, devastated for their only child.
That night, Ronald McDonald House took them in.
Your donations provide families a safe haven, where they can have a cuppa and a shoulder to cry on when it all gets too much.
Ronald McDonald House becomes their second home, where family life can carry on. Meals can be prepared and eaten together, children can play, bedtime stories can be enjoyed and happy memories can be made.
Being close to the hospital, relieves the emotional and financial distress for parents, so they can focus on their child.
These are everyday people in extraordinary circumstances and your support is a gift of kindness that can impact the rest of their lives.
Our services are critical safety nets for parents like Doungnead and Anthony. And every year, more families knock on our door, desperate for any help we can give them.
Please help us make sure we can keep welcoming them in, all over Australia, every day of the year with a tax-deductable gift before 30 June.
It made Anunta's mum rest easier, knowing that the hospital was right on her doorstep if she needed to get Anunta to the hospital fast, especially as her daughter was in a wheelchair, unable to walk.
“You feel relieved, you feel safe. Doctors are not far if she has a fever in the night.” - Doungnead, Anunta's mum
Some of our families are with us for a very short time. Some have to stay for long periods. Anunta’s cancer was very serious and her treatment took months and months.
Her surgery wound wouldn’t heal properly because of the chemotherapy, so she had to keep pausing therapy.
Doungnead and Anthony don’t like to think of how they would have coped without Ronald McDonald House.
We became their second home.
For Anthony and Doungnead, having a place to stay close to the hospital was a real lifesaver. At first, Anthony contemplated pausing the family’s home loan repayments, knowing the family couldn’t sustain the cost of renting close to the hospital – even a single room – for long. It came as a huge relief to find a place like Ronald McDonald House that could take that burden off his and his wife’s shoulders.
