What brave little ‘rainbow warrior’ did next
Mia Chambers, aged six, with her mum Kirsty and dad Josh Reporter REMEMBER the thousands of rainbow-coloured ribbons that decorated Welsh streets over the past 18 months or so?
Motorists drove around Wales with the ribbons attached to their car grilles, businesses used them to adorn their premises and residents hung them on their front doors and gates.
The ribbons were a remarkable show of support for a little girl called Mia Chambers, affectionately referred to by those who know her as the “rainbow warrior”.
After suffering from neuroblastoma – a rare type of cancer that mostly affects babies and young children – a rainbow-themed campaign was started to try to raise funds to give the youngster access to a clinical trial aimed at avoiding a relapse.
The fundraising campaign took off and the multi-coloured ribbons became synonymous with Mia, especially in her hometown of Merthyr Tydfil.
If anything pays testament to the spirit of a Valleys community, this is it.
Mia first became unwell in early 2016 when a cancerous lump was discovered in her stomach and she was taken to Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospital for Wales in Cardiff.
Further tests confirmed the lump was stage four high risk neuroblastoma – a rare type of cancer that mostly affects babies and young children.
After treatment saw her free of cancer, the aim was to be able to go to America for a trial aimed at avoiding a relapse.
Remarkably, £170,000 was raised for her by May 2017. In August last year, the total stood at £280,000 – enough to send her to Michigan to begin the treatment.
Now, two years after the six-year-old’s diagnosis, the brave youngster has turned her attention to helping others facing the same situation.
Life in the Chambers household is starting to return to normal after an unimaginable two years.
When the Merthyr family are not embarking on their mammoth journeys for Mia to receive treatment in America, or otherwise opening half marathons or turning on Christmas lights, the primary school pupil is happy to be back at school full-time.
“A lot of people still recognise Mia and will stop and make remarks and ask how she is doing,” Mia’s father Josh said.
“People still smile everywhere we go because she’s in such a good situation compared to where she was a year ago. She’s still a little bit famous but it’s getting a lot calmer which means Mia can One of the multi-coloured bows sold to raise money for Mia’s treatment
be a child again.”
In many ways, Mia’s response to the cancer was far from normal.
Throughout three months of intensive chemotherapy, surgery, a stem cell transplant and radiotherapy, the youngster astonished medical staff with her resilience.
Josh, 29, said: “One day we were sat down by the top consultants and given the worst case scenario. They said it might not happen but they had to tell us.
“At this point she was getting battered so hard by chemotherapy. After 80 days of chemo the doctors just said how we were all still at home they didn’t know, they had never seen a child react as well as she did.
“Then when she went into surgery they said it would take between six and eight hours to remove her kidney and an ovary.
“It took three hours because they were able to remove the full kidney with the tumour. She lost an organ, but it wasn’t any good because of the cancer anyway.
“After that they said they were going to give her something so that she would sleep for two days. At that point we heard some screaming and we thought it was strange because it sounded like Mia and it was her – she was awake 10 minutes later.”
He added: “That’s when her nickname started. At the hospital she was called Mia Poppet and she hated it. A nurse asked what she wanted to be called instead and she just said ‘call me rainbow warrior.’”
To date, Mia’s fundraising campaign has amassed an astonishing £311,000.
Today, Mia’s family can’t express how much the support has meant to them.
Josh said: “The bows were something so simple that were able to achieve so much. It’s amazing, people have come up to me with rainbow tattoos.”
He added: “I still can’t get over what has happened. It’s given Merthyr a good name.”