Little Annabelle Potts and her family have found hope with brain tumour treatment in Mexico
DOCTORS said they couldn’t do anything more for an Australian girl Annabelle Potts who is fighting for her life. But her family found the breakthrough they needed in an unlikely place.
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TIRED and worn out by waiting, hungry from fasting ahead of an MRI scan and feeling just plain sick in the tummy, Annabelle Potts’s voice shook as she asked her dad again how long the doctors would take to get to her.
“It won’t be long Annabelle,” Adam Potts gently answered.
Annabelle, four, had her 70th brain scan on Tuesday, 13 months after her sudden collapse just after Christmas led to a devastating DIPG diagnosis at Sydney Children’s Hospital.
After a course of radiation and advice from Australian doctors that they couldn’t do anything more for her, Anabelle’s family has spent more than $30,000 on treatments in Mexico since last June.
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On Thursday, weeks after Annabelle started ballet lessons and pre-school, they received the joyous news that she wasn’t showing any evidence of a brain tumour.
But Annabelle’s battle is far from over. Her family know she isn’t cured, and even though Australian doctors don’t support the findings from Dr Siller and Dr Garcia in Monterrey, Annabelle’s parents believe they are their best shot at buying time until there is a cure.
So that means every six weeks, they cough up $30,000 from anywhere they can find it, sometimes through Facebook fundraising, and Adam takes time off work as a carpenter to fly Annabelle from their Canberra home to visit Clinica 0-19.
Although last Tuesday was gruelling and at times painful for Annabelle, she barely complained. For the four hours News Corp Australia spent with her preparing for and undergoing two scans, her dad was a calm, solid and gentle presence for the little girl with whom every day is a bonus.
When asked how he was handling it all so well, he said it was far from their worst day in Monterrey.
That distinction probably goes to their first morning in Mexico, when, on a hunt for groceries with a baby and very sick little girl in a strange city, their taxi driver took a wrong turn into an edgy slum.
With no mobile phone and unable to understand a word from the Spanish-speaking cabbie, Adam looked across at wife Kathy in the worn-out old car, Annabelle and baby William squeezed in the back seat, as strangers banged on their windows, and said: “What on earth are we doing here?”
On Tuesday, Annabelle was worn out by a jet-lagged, 1am Frozen binge as she napped on and off in her dad’s lap.
“These kind of days are just normal now,” he shrugged. “This is just what we have to do to fight this thing.”
For more information on how you can help go to: Love for Annabelle,Fighting DIPG with Annabelle to raise money for fekkow sufferer Annabelle Nguyen and visit the GoFundMe page to help Riaa Kulkarni.
Email: sarah.blake@news.com.au
Twitter: @sarahblakemedia