A timely bump with just 12 weeks to go.
For those who don’t know much about Dreamflight and amazing work they do please spend a bit of time reading the spring news letter:
http://www.dreamflight.org/newsletter/Spring_2009.pdf Read the letters from the kids.
A real tear jerker for me was on page 18, I have copied it below.
HIS HOLIDY OF A LIFETIME
I was one of the Nurses from the old Woody group, now Pirates, that took a young Woody called Aaron along with us to Florida in 2006. When you read this you will realise how you made a young lad’s holiday of a life time possible. YOU includes everyone who has something to do with Dream flight albeit the office staff, ground staff, fundraisers & our USA team. Aaron was a 10 year old young man that spent a lot of his life in hospital he was nominated to go to Florida and was accepted. Sadly Aaron died in 2007, I was asked to speak at his funeral and was honoured to do so. I told some of the funny tales about Aaron's time on the ward I work on, his love of food & if he fancied nothing on the menu he would change religion that day. When his consultant suggested he took up sport this was no problem to Aaron he loved fishing. Aaron arrived at Manchester airport with a smile as big as you could imagine and a very heavy suitcase, on closer inspection in his case I found 15 bottles of suntan lotion 8 shower gels, 4 hair gels, 9 toothbrushes and 6 tins of lynx deodorant. I also noticed Aaron's spending money well exceeded the allocated amount suggested by Dreamflight. This had been supplied by all the staff on the ward, a nice wad of crispy American dollars. Even the secretary Pam had rushed out to get him dollars. Aaron that day was a very rich happy man. The blues skies of Florida beckoned Aaron; he did the fast rides, upside down rides, loved the large USA food portions and swam with the Dolphins. Paul Bowman his carer for the week was a non medical member of staff that works at Heathrow airport. Maia supplied him with a plastic jug and instructions on how to test and measure all Aaron's urine. If you saw Paul and the jug you knew Aaron was not far behind. Paul took this role very seriously and every drop of urine passed was recorded and reported to Maia or myself. Paul would spend a lot of time at night adding Aaron's output up. On the last day we all signed the plastic jug and gave it back to Paul and told him it had been a complete wind-up. Paul still has the jug. As Aaron's coffin entered the church, pride of place on it was a picture of Aaron kissing a Dolphin at Discovery Cove. On a lighter note and I do not think Dave (Aaron's dad) will mind me sharing this, the plan was to bury Aaron in his school uniform. But Dave washed the uniform accidentally on a boil wash and yes it shrunk, so Aaron was buried in his Woody T shirt. Jeannie Hogarth Pirate Group.
(written with the kind permission of Aaron’s father Dave)