Seeing a child suffer is wrong, and Maggie Wright has been through her share of suffering. So when the opportunity arose to help in a small way, Satan’s Little Helper took it.
A bulging vain, a puffy face, cancer, life-threatening sepsis infection. Maggie Wright has had to deal with all of this since the 2021 Labour weekend.
Maggie received her cancer diagnosis after a trip to hospital to sort out some swelling around her face.
“We were told it was probably a viral infection, but the next day a vein in her neck was bulging, so we took her to the emergency department.”
Scary times
An x-ray revealed a cancerous mass at the top of her chest, which had caused her lung to collapse, pushing her heart down into her chest. Maggie’s face was puffy, because the swelling was constricting blood flow to her head.
“Doctors put her straight into intensive care and sent her to Starship the next day.”
Maggie and Emma live in Whanganui and Emma reckons the pair had completed their 27th return trip to Auckland by October 2022. Luckily, the frequency of their trips should slow down soon. By Christmas, Maggie should only need to go to Starship once a month and will have chemo at home until Feb 2024.
Little Miss Optimistic
“She is amazing, you learn so much about yourself through people like her. She said to me ‘how much longer to go on my treatment’, and when I said till February 2024, she celebrated! She’s definitely a glass-half-full type of girl and will see the good in everything.”
During her treatment, Maggie has had to put up with months of isolation. She was laid up in intensive care for so long that she had to learn to walk again.
“She ordinarily loves to be outside, but she can’t do that at the moment, so LEGO has become her new favourite thing.”
Well, when Satan’s Little Helper heard that, there was only one thing for it – we had to indulge Maggie in her new passion.
A new focus
“LEGO gives her something to focus on and something she can look forward to. The set Satan’s Little Helper got for her is a big one, so she spent some time assembling it and now she plays with it as if it was a regular toy.”
For a sporty girl like Maggie, being confined indoors felt like the worst punishment in the world.
“Normally she’d be doing gymnastics, jumping on the trampoline or doing cartwheels in the garden but there’s no way she could do that now, she’s lost too much strength.”
However, there has been one additional ray of sunshine.
“The LEGO has been great – especially during the holidays. It’s taken her mind off things and allowed her to focus on something she can do, instead of the things she can’t.”