At just eleven years old, Daisy should have been running across the football field, laughing with friends, and living a carefree childhood. Instead, much of her young life was spent doubled over in pain, visiting emergency departments, and desperately searching for answers.

From the time she was three, Daisy’s mum, Jessica, knew something wasn’t right. “She would get constipated and scream and cry with stomach pain. The doctors would suggest suppositories, but six months down the track, it would happen again,” Jessica recalled.

As the years went by, the pain became unbearable. By the age of nine, Daisy had lost 12 kilos. She couldn’t eat more than a few hot chips without vomiting.

“She couldn’t run around or ride bikes with the other kids or finish a netball game. She just had no energy,” Jessica said.

Eventually, doctors discovered the truth: Daisy had a 16cm cyst on her abdomen and chronic pancreatitis, a rare and devastating condition in children. The only hope of giving her a life free from constant pain was a complex surgery, a total pancreatectomy with islet auto-transplant, offered at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead.

For Daisy, it meant leaving her home in Perth, travelling across the country, and undergoing a 16-hour operation unlike anything most adults will ever face.

But with the skill of Paediatric Transplant Surgeon, Professor Gordon Thomas, and his dedicated team, Daisy’s life was changed forever.

“They said we were going to do this big surgery, and I was like, ‘nuh-uh’,” Daisy said. “Then when we met Dr Thomas for the first time and he did these drawings of the operation, I started to get it. I realised that if I had the surgery, my life would be normal.”

The procedure was extraordinary. Daisy’s pancreas was removed and sent to a specialist lab, where her insulin-producing islet cells were carefully extracted. These tiny, life-sustaining cells were then transplanted into her liver, allowing her body to keep producing insulin while finally freeing her from the daily pain of pancreatitis.

For Jessica, meeting Dr Thomas was like finding light after years of darkness. “He’s our hero. Not a single day went by in hospital that he didn’t visit Daisy. Even after an 18-hour surgery that finished at 1am, he was there the next morning checking on her. That’s the kind of doctor he is.

“It’s amazing what he does for children,” Jessica said. “He didn’t just save Daisy’s life, he gave her a future. The way he worked with her, the way he explained everything… he gave us hope when we had none left.”

Now, just over a year later, Daisy is back home in WA, chasing her brother around the backyard, playing footy with her dad, and smiling through days that are finally her own again. “It’s amazing,” Jessica said. “We have our Daisy back.”

Daisy’s story is just one example of the futures that can be rewritten through world-leading care and research. By supporting the Children’s Centre for Transplantation and Research through Sydney Children's Hospitals Foundation, you can help pioneer groundbreaking treatments that mean fewer transplants, fewer drugs, and more cures, and giving kids like Daisy not just more time, but the childhood they deserve.