Christmas should be special but one mum recalls the worst festive season she could have ever imagined.
Kay McGonigle s daughter Katie-Mai has come out the healthy side of a heartbreaking battle for her life.
She tells the Sunday World: It should have been a fantastic Christmas because all three of our children were finally old enough to really appreciate Santa. Jack was seven, Charlie was five, Katie-Mai was three. But then, in a hospital room full of tinsel, we heard those awful words, our little girl had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Katie-Mai had been pale and tired, and had unusual bruising on her legs, so on the 26th of November I took her to our GP and then to our local hospital in Clonmel.
Image source: Carlow to Cork Tractor Club
Engines are set to roar this weekend as the Carlow to Cork Tractor Club gets ready to host its annual “Carlow to Cork Tractor Run” with the ultimate goal of raising much-needed funds for Crumlin Hospital.
Set to take place this Saturday (December 19), 20 participants will drive the 400km long route to Cork and back in 20 hours to raise funds in aid of CMRF Crumlin (the principal fundraising body for CHI at Crumlin).
In the past 16 years, the Carlow to Cork tractor Club has raised in excess of €419,135 to support Crumlin and is determined that 2020 will be no different in its annual support of the hospital.
Last week, three judges of the High Court in London ruled that transgender children, aged 13 or under, were “highly unlikely” to be “competent to give consent” to chemical treatments prescribed for them. For those between 14 and 16 they said competent consent was “doubtful” and for those aged 17 and 18 the judges said that competence to consent was presumed but doctors may want to seek court orders before prescribing puberty blockers due to the experimental nature of the treatment.
In others words, the judges were raising serious concerns about the ability to give informed consent to treatments in current use. The Tavistock Clinic planned to appeal the judgment but this has been rejected.
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