SOPHIE’S LEGACY
Our April meeting was again held in the large hall at Christ Church, Portsdown. Our speaker, Charlotte, spoke about her charity “Sophie’s Legacy”.
Sophie was a beautiful, bright, happy child, but with a maturity beyond her years. When she was only 9 her parents received the news every family must fear, that their daughter was very seriously ill.
Sophie had an aggressive form of cancer which although treated with nine rounds of chemo and seven weeks of radiotherapy, followed by an ongoing “maintenance” chemo dose, her tumour, which appeared at one stage to have almost disappeared, devastatingly was found to have returned.
Sophie made the brave decision that, since it was unlikely to be effective, she should stop treatment.
Having experienced first hand the problems of being a child in hospital she produced a list of things she felt would improve hospital stays for other families and children in a similar situation, and her mother promised to continue to make these happen after she was no longer with us.
And so “Sophie’s Legacy” began its work, supporting families with a child in hospital, no matter for what reason. Making sure parents staying in hospital with their child have access to hot food, providing child-friendly meals for children, creating areas for play and to help make scary procedures less frightening, providing “emergency boxes” with toiletries etc, even phone chargers for unexpected admissions.
Sophie passed away in September 2021, aged 10, but her legacy lives on.
This was a sad but inspiring talk about a brave young girl and her truly amazing mother.
