The Cameron Family
Our Family
My name is Mel. I am a mother of six, 5 girls, 1 boy
and we live in Australia.
I started mother hood at 14 years of age.
I have since raised my own children as well as my husbands.
We lost our son to the most horrible disease,
A Mitochondrial Disease called Leigh's complex 1 and 4.
If you want more info go to the Mito Links on our main page.
This disease seems to have taken over and in ways, runs my life.
I sit and wonder wether or not my other children
will be affected in anyway by the disease.
Are they going to have to suffer the disease?
Are they going to have to lose a baby to this disease?
How much more suffering are we as a family going to endure?
Jasen and I met 7 years ago. We already had 2
beautiful daughters each.
Then we decided we would like to add a new member,
so
along came Britney.
Not too long later came our only little boy
Drew. He was born very
healthy but his
good health didn't keep up. At 2
weeks old he was failing
to
thrive and had a lot of trouble trying to drink
his bottles.
Then he
didn't reach his milestones when he was supposed to.
By this time the GP
decided that Drew should
be seen by a Pediatrician,
so off we
went to the
first of many visits.
The Peadiatrician ran many tests
only to find nothing.
But
there was something wrong and we all new it.
At
6 months of age Drew was
admitted to the
Tweed Heads Hospital, and for the 5th time
he became critically ill
and was rushed to Brisbane
hospital for specialist
treatment. This is when
the doctors told me that my son had a metabolic
problem
but could not tell
any more.
By January 1999, after Drew had
been in and out of three
different hospitals and had hundreds of invasive
tests the doctors finally
told me the worst news.
my only son had a rare
disease called Leigh's
disease
and that they did not think he would live
past six years of age.
He
was only 14 months old.
Sadly drew only made it to
17mths of age.
He died on
Good Friday 1999 2nd of April.
Drew has become the families hero.
For a little boy
he showed more courage
than any one
else I know , he showed us strength,
wisdom, love, affection.
He taught us that no matter how hard things
get we
always have each other.
We have a few special songs that we enjoyed
listening to with Drew.
"Truly
Madly Deeply" by Savage Garden,
"Tears in Heaven" by
Eric Clapton and "I'll be
Missing You" by Puff Daddy.
These were all played at
his funeral.
We also released 50 blue and white
Helium Balloons as we
committed Drew to the ground.
I'm also starting an Australian support group for
Mitochondrial sufferers
as a Chapter of the UMDF.
Our Girls
Drew as an infant
Drew with our good family friend Vikki
Our Little Britney
 �� �� 
|
|
