Kids with cancer love their ‘cosy’

Helen O’Callaghan hears about a mum’s blanket of hope campaign.

The mother of a four-year-old fighting leukaemia wants every child attending Crumlin Children’s Hospital, who has been diagnosed with cancer, to have a blanket of ‘comfort and hope’.

Susan Brown from Monaghan was in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, when son Ceejay was having blood tests done last September.

The little boy — diagnosed with leukaemia aged two — developed a temperature and had to be admitted. “I stayed with him. He was in bed and the hospital blanket was more like a little bed sheet.

It just looked so clinical and he looked so vulnerable, curled up and hugging into himself. Maybe it was mother’s instinct but I just wanted to wrap him up.”

Susan rang husband Marcus and asked him to bring Ceejay a blanket.

“He brought a big red throw that we use on a chair in the sitting room.

Ceejay just automatically started calling it his ‘cosy’. It was a real comfort to him, like it offered him protection.” Later, in St John’s Ward, Crumlin, where Ceejay was getting chemo, Susan “noticed all the children lying up in bed with just their hospital blanket.“I thought: Wouldn’t it be lovely if everyone had one”.

She discovered a US project that supplies blankets to all hospitalised children. “I put up a Facebook page – Bravery Blanky – asking would people donate hand-knitted or crocheted blankets. The response was unbelievable.”

Every week, Susan — who gave up her childcare job when Ceejay got sick — receives about 30 blankets, collected from drop-off points around Ireland.

“We’re getting them from all over. People say their mums and grannies love the project. We even got a box from the UK.”

Each time Ceejay visits Crumlin for chemo, his parents bring boxes of blankets. “The children love them – on chemo they can feel very cold. They get to keep their blanket and some have posted Facebook pictures of themselves with it.”

The blankets aren’t done to a pattern and Susan asks for as much colour as possible. “We don’t use patterns. We want each blanket to be unique to each child.”

Meanwhile, Ceejay will undergo treatment for a further year. Always a fan of the gardaí, he was made an honorary Garda at the passing out parade in Templemore last year. Now he’s looking forward to marching with the gardaí and meeting the NYPD at New York’s St Patrick’s Day Parade.

www.facebook.com/Bravery-Blanky-1103176209770624/