Appeal to help brave Ruth in cancer battle
THE family of a little girl who has to sleep in the living room because she is too ill to get up the stairs are fundraising for adaptations to their home.
Ruth Grace Crosby, eight, who lives with her mum Joanne, dad Stuart and little sister Amelia, was diagnosed in October last year with Osteosarcoma, a rare type of bone cancer.
Since then she has undergone gruelling chemotherapy, which caused her to have an allergic reaction that left her body riddled with painful blisters inside and out, and a seven-and-a-half hour operation to remove the cancerous bone in her leg, which was replaced with a donor bone that came from Miami.
She is now in a full leg cast, which means she is unable to walk and gets tired very easily and her family have been told that even with extensive physiotherapy she may never regain full use of her leg.
Ruth-Grace’s leg will also never grow, as surgeons had to cut through the growth plate, so she will have to have more surgery in the future to prevent her legs from becoming uneven.
Just this year she has had to spend a week in the High Dependency Unit receiving blood and platelet transfusions after becoming unwell and undergo a further operation to remove infected tissue from her leg.
Her mum Joanne, 37, said: “We have had to make a lot of changes to the house and we have been told we are not eligible for a disabilities grant because Ruth-Grace has been so recently diagnosed.
“Long term she is going to need a bathroom downstairs and we’ve had to have half the kitchen taken out in order to put one in – so now we don’t really have a functioning kitchen.”
The family, who live in Tameside, are holding a fundraising family fun quiz night at the Life Leisure centre in Woodley, Stockport, on May 7.
“They have given us the venue for free,” Joanne said. “We are hoping to raise around £500. Some of the money will go towards the adaptations to the house, but we also want to give some to the charities that have supported us.
“We also want to raise awareness. It is such a rare condition that very few people have heard of it, but if they are aware they can look out for the signs.”
And this brave little girl is refusing to let her illness get her down. Ruth-Grace said: “My life is going to be different now and I will always be disabled but I am always going to keep smiling.”
For more information or for tickets to the event in May, visit facebook.com/ ruthgracesbattle.