Meet Ruby
Meet Ruby
This joyful, friendly Dream Kid is dreaming of visiting Disney World with her family.
A Letter From A Dream Parent:
Three-year-old Ruby adores anything Halloween. She enjoys watching anything Halloween-related on tv, especially ‘Baby Shark Halloween’. She loves (trying!) to read - books and stuffed animals make her so happy! Some of Rubys favourite foods are bananas, sandwiches, ham, and goldfish. Ruby also loves her two dogs at home named Bilbo and Gizmo.
But earlier this year, our world came crashing down. Ruby was diagnosed with DS AML - Down syndrome Acute Myeloid Leukemia - in January 2023.
Ruby started to become very, very sick in December 2022. She had a consistent fever of 39 and higher -up to 41. Children’s emergency kept saying she had pneumonia, bronchitis, and sinusitis - it took three emergency room visits for them to finally check her blood. And there they found the blasted cells.
Pictured: Dream Kid Ruby rarely stops sharing her shining smile.
Because of our persistent visits to emergency, we caught it very quick and started treatment January 20th, 2023. Chemo may be tough on our little girl, but she is so resilient and still smiles 24 hours a day. She just started chemo cycle 3 of 6 on April 4, 2023!
Ruby’s Dream is to go to Disney world. My grandmother, Ruby, was diagnosed with colon cancer when I was very young. After her diagnosis, she gifted my family was a trip to Disney World so we could cherish and make lasting memories. Sadly, my grandmother, Ruby passed when I was 5.
I had always wanted to take my future child to Disney World because my grandma created a lot of happiness for us during a very stressful time with that trip. We named Ruby after my grandma, and Ruby already obsesses over anything Disney related! Her favourite being a Mickey Mouse stuffy a friend got for her.
Our Dream as a family is to go just Ruby, myself, and her dad to get away together to make memories after Ruby’s diagnosis and treatment that has put a huge storm over our lives.
Pictured: Dream Kid Ruby at her first meeting with The Dream Factory.
Ruby is our entire world. Any nurse or staff at the hospital that walks into her room will immediately smile because she radiates happiness every minute of every day. Her smile lights the entire world up, even when she’s fighting leukaemia in the hospital away from her room and her home and animals. Ruby is the toughest little girl with all she has been through since birth.
To Ruby, her dad, and me, this Dream is something that we can look forward to after this storm passes. We wouldn’t be able to afford it without The Dream Factory because of the financial strain of having a child in treatment. The day The Dream Factory came into our daughter’s hospital room was the day we saw more hope than ever. It was very emotional because we didn’t expect it and we sure didn’t think we would ever be given a gift like this. It means the entire world to us and no amount of words will ever express that.
We are so excited to go on our first family trip together. Ruby is a very deserving little girl and is our rainbow baby. The ability to take her to a place filled with happiness and love, to be able to be spoiled, to see all these characters in the movies she watches in her hospital room literally come to life in front of her... it’s exactly what we would want for her.
- Dream Mom Hayley