The Telethon Adventurers

Hayley and David Engelbrecht were thrilled when Hayley gave birth to a long anticipated baby daughter, to add to their brood of four boys.

But when their baby girl, Sinead, was just 11 weeks old, she was diagnosed with an extremely rare brain tumour, a congenital glioblastoma multiforme, grade 4, stage 4. It was taking up three quarters of her head and was pushing her brain to the back of her skull.

Sinead underwent numerous life threatening operations to debulk and resect the tumour, and as a result of the second surgery, had the left frontal half of her skull removed. At one point she lost six times her blood, one of the anaesthetists commented that in the 20 years of working at PMH, he had never had to transfuse that amount of blood for someone so young; she also had to be resuscitated. On one occasion, Sinead had to have emergency surgery to evacuate a clot at the back of her head, causing immense pressure; on another occasion, she was rushed to theatre to have a reprogrammable shunt inserted, which would relieve pressure build up due to hydrocephalus.

Sinead began chemotherapy in December 2009, after recovering somewhat from her surgeries, completing the final round on Christmas Eve 2010. The oncologists said that they were merely buying her family time to spend with her (the average survival time for patients with this tumour is 12 months, with no survival statistics more than five years).

With all the surgeries and treatment she has received, Sinead’s chance of survival has been increased to 33%, which is still extremely negative and hard for her family to come to terms with. All they can do is stay positive, have faith and live each day to the fullest.

Sinead is now 18 months old, and has not only exceeded everyone's expectations and gone into remission, she’s also learnt to walk and is showing every sign of being a bright, happy little girl with no indication of brain damage.