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Indie’s Journey, Christchurch (2025)

14/03/2023

⭐️Yesterday was officially the end of a chapter ⭐️
- the hardest one ever !

💕Our beautiful brave Indie is no longer an active patient of CHOC , she’s rang the bell and stamped the giraffe and she is on her way! 💕

Sam, Charlotte , Indie and I will forever be so thankful to all of you that played a part in getting us through the hardest time of our lives 🥹

12/02/2023

The child cancer foundation still needs some volunteers to collect donations on the 10th and 11th of March ! If you can spare a couple of hours of your time to an amazing cause ; this is a charity we couldn’t have got through the last 8 months without ! 💙

We will be at the Palms in Shirley with our blue buckets between 10 and 12 on Friday the 10th of March if you want to come and say Hey 👋🏼

01/02/2023

Indie had cake to celebrate no more chemo !! 🎂🥳
Complete with 6 candles , one for each month of hell she endured 🥺

We are just waiting for her bloods to fully recover , some end of treatment tests and then Indie can get back to living a some what normal life 😍

We love you sweet girl , you’ve taught us all so much on this journey ❤️

23/01/2023

Day 9 in the hospital 😩
Indies still on 8 hourly antibiotics , possibly for another week yet .
Her Hickmann line is gone once and for all 👏🏻 they removed it early due to the infection and also Indie being so close to the end now . She has a normal IV line in her foot and is handling this really well 🤩.

Poor girl is completely off her food today as she has a very sore mouth - likely oral thrush from all the antibiotics 😭

Buuuut how cute is the newest addition to her very impressive hat collection ?? 😍

19/01/2023

One day down , one more to go and chemo is done ✅

17/01/2023

Yesterday morning Indie was bright and bubbly and from what I could see WELL ! We headed to CHOC for a planned appointment to check bloods and the dr asked how she had been , I told him “Indie’s been great , this round of chemo has gone super smoothly with no infections and no blood products needed “ . The dr agreed.

Coincidence that literally minutes after that conversation she started to go down hill ? I think not . Just the universe giving us another slap in the face 😭🖕🏼

Poor Indie slept most of yesterday after spiking a good fever but she picked up after some IV paracetamol and antibiotics so we headed home … Only to be called back at 9pm last night because indies blood cultures had grown another nasty bug 🙄

Indies now on a stronger antibiotic and is having more tests to try and find out where this bug started ; so for now she’s confined to her hospital room for who knows how long 👎🏼

30/12/2022

Today marks 153 days of treatment for Indie , I think she smiled through just about everyone of those days,she truely has more strength and resilience than any other human I know.

I hope one day that reading back through this journey of hers ; she will realise just how incredible her two year old self really was and that will give her even more strength to get through whatever life throws her way.

She danced into her second year of life , us by her side also oblivious to the cancer that would already have been growing in her wee body 😭 but as you’ll see from the photos , what happened in the past 6 months rarely touched Indies bright spark !
She has the brightest most beautiful smile and a big personality that lights up a room . She’s kind and caring and super aware of other peoples emotions. She’s SO clever and has learnt all of the colours while she’s been on treatment and has a full vocabulary now .

As we walk out the hospital doors today we will have just ONE more cycle of chemo to tackle in the new year 👏🏻

I’ve honestly never been happier to see the end of a year , what the actual f**k even was that 😭
Wishing all of our beautiful friends and family a very Happy and safe new year - Thank you to those who carried us through ❤️

30/12/2022

Indies in the thick of another cycle of chemo that’s wiping her out 😭; but she’s got the best big sister by her side ❤️

07/12/2022

The 20th of January 2023 will be Indies last day of chemo , hopefully for the rest of her long beautiful life ! 🥳👏🏻❤️

It will actually be the end of all treatment for our superstar because she has fought this 💪🏼❤️

With a less than 10% chance of her cancer coming back we can avoid brachy therapy and it’s terrifying side effects - we will take that and run with it and hope we never end up so unlucky ever again 🤞🏼🤞🏼

This has without a doubt been the best news this entire sh*tshow of a year and we can actually say we are excited for 2023 ; although it will still have a bumpy start and Indie will be monitored really closely for the first year , that’s nothing compared to the past 6 months of what I can only describe as hell.

I’m off to book us the most epic family holiday ✈️👨‍👩‍👧‍👧

Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who has wrapped us in so much love and support ❤️🥹 words will never be enough !

05/12/2022

Today we will finally get some solid answers around Indies treatment plan from here ! Unfortunately , although her tumor is gone the biopsy still came back with rhabdomyosarcoma cells present in the scar tissue 😭

So our team were consulting with a team in Sydney to discuss whether Brachy therapy ( a type of radiation) would be beneficial for Indie . The side effects of this treatment are pretty nasty and some would directly effect Indies quality of life , another one of the catch-22 situations where you feel like no option is the right option 💔

Upon trying to do some of my own research into it , I came across this sentence ;

“Given the rarity of pediatric vaginal tumors, few studies have reported the oncological outcomes of patients treated with brachy therapy”

My thoughts ? Well f**k , what exactly are we basing the next step of indies treatment on if there’s next to no study’s been done on it - trying to trust the team who undoubtedly know so much more than we do but it is HARD

Indie remains stronger than ever in her fight 💪🏼 it’s actually hard to know when she’s becoming unwell these days as she can still be running around laughing with a temp that’s through the roof 🤯 She spent 3 nights in hospital last week with an infection but this didn’t bother her ! Now we are just 2 days out from the 7th round of chemo , that was the fastest 3 weeks ever !

We don’t know what the future holds yet and we may not even after today but we are making the most of all the good days ,
Indies beautiful bright smile and love of the simple things in life is enough to keep us going ❤️

16/11/2022

Another surgery done for Miss Indie ✅

Hello Mr Hickmann - we didn’t miss you 😫
All set to go for the sixth cycle of chemo tomorrow .
Indie also had a biopsy taken today so we should know in a week whether we will have to go down the route of radiation in addition to the chemo.

Life has been throwing our family plenty of other curveballs just lately too so we must be due a massive break 😭🤞🏼

Don’t know how we would be managing without our super supportive workplaces , the meals and care parcels that keep arriving on our doorstep and everyone who offers there constant love and support ! Thank you all so much ❤️

31/10/2022

Another big week for superstar Indie , not that she knows what she’s in for yet 🥺

-A blood transfusion today 🩸
- A platelet transfusion first thing tomorrow
- Surgery tomorrow to remove her central line due to an infection that won’t clear 😭😭 - this is a complication we could have done without and means poor Indie will likely have lots of needle pricks over the next week while she has no line . A week after the old line is out she will have another surgery to have a new one put in , just in time for her next cycle of chemo !

Her poor wee body 😓

We have been making the most of having her at home and well over the weekend ! ☀️❤️🎃💥🌼

25/10/2022

Indie has now been in active treatment for 87 days ! 😨

With her 5th cycle of chemo starting yesterday , she’s totally zapped from it today 😭 and this is officially her longest stint in hospital , 8 nights and counting.

Looking back a lot of the early days seem like a blur now , it makes me realise the true mental impact something like this has , you just end up living your life in survival mode . I unapologetically have a lot less tolerance for certain things and some people on particular days , I’m putting all my energy where it needs to be !

With Christmas fast approaching it’s hitting us that this year will be very different to any other , it’s hard to make any plans when everything is so unknown , we likely won’t be able to leave Christchurch till well into the new year .
I am also well aware that there are families in here who’s lives are so much more disrupted than ours and families who have to spend weeks if not months seperated from one another 😭😭 So I’m also very grateful because as bad as things feel sometimes , they could always be worse.

That’s my winge for the week , I’ve been trying not to complain as I spend my days next to a 2 year old who is being robbed of her childhood and she still rarely complains about anything 💔

Here’s perky Indie yesterday before the chemo took its toll 🥹

22/10/2022

Day number 5 of waking up In hospital for Indie but she is not complaining , she really is the biggest super star ⭐️

We’ve been able to leave throughout the day but back every 6 hours for antibiotics ; Indies now on two different antibiotics to fight off a nasty infection that got into her blood , this will go on for at least 7 days and hoping there will be no delay in this weeks chemo 🤞🏼

Thank you to everyone who checks in regularly and all the constant offers of help ❤️

18/10/2022

She’s been doing so well but our poor wee Indie is neutropenic once again and spiked a temperature out of nowhere today 😭😭

She’s spent a good part of today sleeping ; hoping she will feel better soon with some antibiotics on board 🤞🏼

Indie’s Journey

14/03/2023

12/02/2023

01/02/2023

23/01/2023

19/01/2023

17/01/2023

30/12/2022

30/12/2022

07/12/2022

05/12/2022

16/11/2022

31/10/2022

25/10/2022

22/10/2022

18/10/2022

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