Pawtraits inspired by mum’s cancer battle
A 10-year-old boy from Washington is raising money for a North East cancer charity by creating ‘Palmer’s Pawtraits’ after witnessing his mum battle the disease.
Washington mum-of-three Ashleigh Palmer was initially diagnosed with stage two Lymphocyte-rich classical Hodgkin’ s Lymphoma in August 2019 after discovering a painless lump on her collar bone.
She began chemotheraphy at Sunderland Royal Hospital and nearly a year later, in June 2020, was told she was in complete remission.
However, just eight months on, Ash leigh was told in February 2021 that the cancer had returned for a second time, prompting her to undergo a stem cell transplant on June 16 after scans showed that she was back in remission.
She commented: “It took three months to get back into remission for the transplant, then I spent three weeks in isolation at the Freeman and Sunderland Royal Hospital.
“I’m thankful to be here, to be given treatment options and I’m doing well with scans showing remission but I will still need more follow-up scans in the future.”
Throughout her battles, Gateshead-based charity Fighting All Cancers Together (FACT) helped Ashleigh and her family and now her son, Travis, is wanting to give back with artwork.
Travis and Ashleigh came up with Palmer’s Pawtraits, which involves Travis creating artwork of other people’s dogs and selling them to raise money for the charity, in the hope that they can help other families.
Ashleigh, who is also mum to Austin, five and Felicity, four, said: “Travis has always been a good little artist, he drew our dog Luna and really enjoyed it.
“I said to him you could do this for charity and it literally took off from there, he came up with the name Pawtraits and I added the Palmer’s.
"Travis doesn’t want other children to have to go through what he and his mam have been through because it was awful.
“He still gets upset about it all, however he remembers that there is help out there, especially the good times that FACT have given us with children's days out to jump parks when I've been poorly, kindness kits and food parcels.
“He said that if someone else's mam got poorly, they could go to FACT and get some help.”
Travis has so far raised almost £300 with his Pawtraits and the commissions are not slowing down any time soon – with Ashleigh drawing on her own experiences of help from FACT.
She added: “For me FACT have been there when needed, whether that be counselling, someone to check in on you and of course the fact that they think about you not just as an individual but as a family.
“Cancer rips through the whole family and it helps me to know there are charities out there like FACT who would help my children and try to make things as easy as possible.
"We were shocked that Travis had raised so much in such little time, he has drawn some amazing dogs so far and we are about to post them. He has got another 18 requests so far and he's very proud, proud to help other children and bring a smile to people's faces with their dog Pawtraits.”