Help Our Kids: Nurses' dress-up helped cure fears

Claudia Chaney says Starship's staff mean a lot to her and she hopes 'they can keep doing what they are doing and help other kids'. Photo / Janna Dixon

We need you to help us to Help Our Kids. The Herald is running a major campaign to try and raise at least $150,000 for our national children’s hospital, Starship. Each year, more than 9000 Kiwi kids from right throughout the country are treated in Starship’s theatres. Now it’s our turn to help the hospital and staff that Help Our Kids.

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Starship nurses dressed up as cats and a doctor wrapped himself in green bandages to look like a leprechaun in their efforts to settle a young leukaemia patient.

Claudia Chaney, 14, has had more than 300 procedures under general anaesthetic, her mother Lisa Petersen estimates. She also loves cats.

Claudia's sister Arielle, 8, has also been treated at a Starship theatre - for a blocked bowel, on the day of her birth.

At first Claudia was so scared on her way to theatre she would hide in a pillow case and scream. But the staff would dress up and leave presents for her to find when she woke - and eventually the ice was broken.

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So much so that Claudia started looking forward to going to theatre.

At 3, she had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia, leading to a nine-month Starship stay. Chemotherapy didn't work so she was given a bone marrow transplant.

She has suffered major complications from the transplant, but it is now considered unlikely the leukaemia will come back.

"We were thinking it was going well," says Ms Petersen, "then she got graft-versus-host disease when cells from the bone marrow attack the body. That went into her stomach and that made her really sick. We got told to bring in the family to say goodbye overnight.

"They just kept going with trying to fix it and over a couple of months it got better but then she got graft-versus-host on the scalp and it went into her joints. The way she's sitting [she has to use a wheelchair] is the way she is permanently fixed."

At 5, her scalp became flaky and while her hair was being washed - "her hair came off with almost all the skin of her scalp. It was extremely painful".

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Claudia has had many visits to theatre for skin grafts - some of which failed - and to change dressings. Her latest visit was to take out several teeth damaged by leukaemia drugs, which have also affected her heart.

Her skin remains fragile and the wounds on her scalp are managed at home. The hair loss is permanent and Claudia wears a wig.

But despite her troubles, she dislikes people feeling sorry for her, Ms Petersen says. "She just says to them, 'Well, I'm alive'."

Asked about her health, the Epsom Girls Grammar School pupil says in a small but assertive voice, "I'm good."

How's school? "It's been a big adjustment because the school I was at last year, Kohia Terrace, was tiny. I'm in Year 9 ... I quite like English."

The teen says Starship and its staff mean the world to her: "It means a lot - people that I know and all my friends.

"It's just nice to be there."

She also hopes people will donate to the theatres upgrade and expansion so "they can keep doing what they are doing and help other kids".

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