No stopping sisters
RUN Geelong’s pint-sized sisters are back to support the cause for another year, raising funds to help sick and injured kids while their health journeys take a new twist.
Seven-year-old Mia Ciach has been found to have the same rare condition that saw Ava, 8, have major skull surgery in 2014.
Mia’s two sagittal plates are fused in the same way Ava’s were before she had her skull removed, leaving her brain exposed, while a team of doctors reconstructed and then reattached the bone over nine hours.
It was while taking a photo of Mia last year that Geelong West mum Stacey Ciach saw her youngest daughter’s head looked “exactly like” her sister’s did pre-surgery.
“From there it snowballed and I took her to her paediatrician then he sent her to Melbourne to Ava’s surgeon and he discovered, through a CAT scan, that it was fused,” Ms Ciach said.
For now, surgery is not on the cards for Mia.
“At the moment she has no intracranial pressure, so it’s just a sort of watch and monitor,” Ms Ciach said.
“She has regular eye checks and that’s a good indication — if the back of her eyes look swollen then she’s got pressure but at the moment she is OK.”
The same monitoring also detected swelling in Ava’s skull earlier this year so Royal Children’s Hospital staff operated to place a monitor on her brain to measure pressure.
“It found (the pressure) increases at night . . . Ava does wake up more fatigued and she does get headaches but she’s so tough, she doesn’t complain,” Ms Ciach said.
Blood samples from the siblings were sent to an institute in Sydney to assess whether their shared condition was genetic, but nothing was obvious.
For now the St Roberts Newtown students are living life to the fullest, bonding over their shared condition and looking forward to soaking up the festival-like fun of Run Geelong once more.
“Mia thinks she is very unique like her sister. Nothing stops them. Ava does tennis and Mia loves her dance,” Ms Ciach said.
The resilient sisters, who were born prematurely at 30 weeks and 29 weeks, have a long history with Run Geelong after taking on the role of ambassadors in 2013.
When the event returns on November 19, they will join their parents for the Cotton On 6km Family Walk before running alongside school kids from across the region in the Cotton On Kids 1km Kids Dash.
This year’s event will raise funds for Barwon Health’s paediatric rehabilitation services.
For more information or to register, visit runaustralia. com.au/location/geelong/