Marnee Walters is $700 away from donating her hair to Variety–The Children’s Charity to be made into wigs for sick kids like her good friend Adelaide Gurr who has Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia.
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Six-year-old Marnee has received financial support from the community through GoFundMe with plans to donate the funds to Adelaide’s parents Kirran and Dave to help with medical costs.
The Gurr family moved from Gunnedah to Maitland on January 15, 2016 and 10 days later, Adelaide was diagnosed. With the anniversary of Adelaide’s diagnosis recently passing, Kirran said the family had reflected on the changes in their lives.
The four-year-old still has 18 months of chemotherapy treatment left.
“We’re sort of counting down,” Kirran said.
Adelaide’s hair is continuing to grow back which has been a real positive.
“She even put it into a teeny tiny piggy tail the other day. It was very exciting,” Kirran said.
“We’re finding it’s growing really quickly.
“It’s much lighter, and it’s growing at the back quite curly.”
Adelaide has a great love for hair, with dreams of having “Elsa hair” from the famous Disney movie Frozen. She became fascinated when she lost her hair during chemotherapy and began to wear wigs. Her favourite was a wig modelled after Elsa’s hair.
While Adelaide is keen to grow her hair, Marnee was disappointed to still have long hair when she started Year 1 this term.
“She wanted to get it cut before school,” Marnee’s mum Meleah said.
“Another thing we didn’t actually realise was that it actually takes 20-30 ponytails to make a wig, so Marnee’s hair won’t just make one wig. It will be joined together with quite a few other little girls’ hair.”
Meleah started the GoFundMe campaign in early January and is brainstorming ways to reach the goal of $5000.
“We’ve got a couple of ideas. I’m trying to get Adelaide’s preschool in Morpeth to have a crazy hair day. We’re hoping Gunnedah Preschool will have a crazy hair week because the kids go on different days,” she said.
Meleah said she was grateful to the community for digging deep for the cause.
“We think it’s an amazing effort within the amount of time frame that we’ve had, especially so close after Christmas,” she said.
“We’re just overwhelmed with how generous people have been; even with people who don’t know Adelaide or Marnee.”
To donate to the GoFundMe campaign, visit https://www.gofundme.com/adelaidepraylove
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