For most teenagers, a school day starts with breakfast and packing lunch. For Tayla, it begins with medication, managing her stoma bag, and preparing a backpack that pumps vital fluids into her body throughout the day. 

Tayla lives with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a rare genetic condition that affects the body’s connective tissues. Her mum Reanne and both her sisters also live with the condition, but Tayla’s is by far the most severe. Her bowels no longer work, and without her ileostomy bag she would face life-threatening obstructions. Her stomach has slowed too much to function, so all her nutrition is delivered directly into her intestines. Eating and drinking makes her so unwell that even something as simple as a sip of water is a struggle.

From just four days old, Tayla’s life has been filled with challenges – rushed to hospital with kidney infections and pneumonia, battling constant pain, enduring more than 20 surgeries and procedures, and taking up to 12 medications six times a day. Yet despite the endless appointments and half-days at school, she is one of the happiest kids you could ever meet. She loves her friends, adores her cavoodles Uno and Millie who never leave her side, and has an energy for life that shines even on the hardest days. 

What makes this strength possible is not just medicine, but the moments that let Tayla still be a kid. Child Life Therapy has played a vital role in giving her those moments. At Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick, Child Life Therapists support Tayla through the countless admissions and procedures that have become her normal. They are there to explain what’s happening in ways she understands, to distract her when things get painful, and to give her space to play, laugh and feel in control of her world. These simple but powerful interventions are as essential to Tayla’s wellbeing as the medicine in her backpack.

For families like Tayla’s, this support is life-changing and it’s made possible because of philanthropy. Every donor who helps fund Child Life Therapy gives children facing lifelong conditions the chance to experience hospital not just as a place of illness, but as a place of hope, care and understanding.

Tayla’s story is not defined by her diagnosis, but by her optimism and the community standing beside her. With the support of donors, her future can be one filled not just with treatment, but with joy, friendship and the chance to live life to the fullest. 

Your generosity makes stories like Tayla’s possible. Together, we can change the future for sick kids.