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Kelsie Ann

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I'm walking All Night Long! But I need your help

I'm joining a celebration of courage to raise funds for sick kids and their families. I really need your support!

 Each day can feel like a marathon for sick kids and their families. Which is why I'm walking 42kms All Night Long this October.

This is where you can help. Will you please donate what you can? Every dollar you give will support sick kids across Queensland through the incredible work of the Children’s Hospital Foundation and Ronald McDonald House South East Queensland, while giving me the inspiration and energy I need to keep going all night long.



Yep, this is going to be a challenge, and I'm going to be exhausted and tired at the end. But I know with your help, it will be so worth it, and it's a fraction of what families with sick kids go through. Please donate now. 💛

My Impact

So far this year I have helped provide...
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52

bags of Bravery Beads to recognise the courage of a sick child.

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16

families supported with urgent clothing, food, and toiletries.

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6

nights of comfort for a family at Ronald McDonald House.

Please Help Me
Reach My Goal

Raised so far

$1,041

My Goal

$1,500

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Thank you to my Sponsors

$200

Sharni Fenton

❤️ xx

$106.12

Anonymous

$106.12

Wendy

Taite has been amazing as you are too.. go girl!! Very proud xxx

$86.07

Anonymous

$86.07

Susie Kench

With love Kelsie xx

$54.84

Mandy + Gus

Amazing of you to do💜💛. Taite is one lucky dude to have you. Xx

$54.84

Jackie & Ian Dunne

Mandy and Gus are very special to us and I know how terribly hard it’s been for them the past few months - wishing you and your boy love and strength for the journey ahead. What a fantastic and worthy cause - good luck!

$54.84

Nanny Tanny

❤️

$54.84

Kira Moore

$50

Gabrielle Bell

With you every step, these fundraisers are vital for success and support

$50

Sharni Mcneill

In awe of all that you have done, do, and will continue to do xx

$46.77

Anonymous

$23.50

Nick Fenton

Love your work

$23.50

Sammy Major

Love you guys! Always watching from Afar xxxx

$23.50

Rosa 💜

You and Taite are bloody legends! To have gone through (& will continue to do so) is incredible.

$20

Lily & Rory

My Updates

Six months ago, we said goodbye to the immune system that was trying to kill my son

Friday 10th Jul
Roughly six months ago, I handed my 10-year-old son over to a team of doctors and nurses and watched him begin a bone marrow transplant. It's strange to think about now. We spent months counting down to transplant day, convinced that if we could just get there, everything would somehow become easier. It didn't. Because transplant wasn't the finish line. It was the beginning.

Over the previous 18 months, our world had become a revolving door of specialists, blood tests, hospital admissions and words we'd never imagined would become part of our everyday vocabulary.

Autoimmune Hepatitis.
Type 1 Diabetes.
Autoimmune Enteropathy.
Psoriasiform Dermatitis.
Eventually, genetic testing revealed what had been causing the chaos all along... IPEX syndrome.

A disease so rare that most people, including many healthcare professionals, will never meet someone living with it.

For Taite, it meant that the immune system designed to protect him had turned against him. The only treatment with the potential to cure it was a bone marrow transplant. So that's what we did.

When people think about bone marrow transplants, they often imagine the transplant itself is the hardest part. In reality, it's everything that comes afterwards. For weeks, there is almost no immune system. Every fever is urgent. Every virus carries a different weight. Every blood result can change the direction of your day. It's a strange place to live, equal parts hope and fear.

What many people don't know is that because Taite received a haploidentical (half-matched) bone marrow transplant, he became eligible to participate in a clinical trial funded by the Children's Hospital Foundation and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute.

The trial is researching virus-specific T-cell therapy, an innovative treatment designed to protect children receiving haplo transplants from life-threatening viral infections while their new immune systems are still learning how to work.

When you're raising a child with an ultra-rare disease, research stops being something you read about in the news... It becomes deeply personal. Because one day, that research becomes your child.

Throughout this journey, I understand that the charities fund possibility. They fund researchers asking questions nobody has answered yet. They fund clinical trials that give children access to treatments years before they become standard care. They fund gene therapy. Immunotherapy. Rare disease research. The next breakthrough.

For families like ours, those things aren't "nice to have." They're everything.

This upcoming Tuesday, we're six months post-transplant. We're celebrating milestones I wasn't sure we'd ever reach. Watching Taite turn 11 felt extraordinary. Not because birthdays are unusual. But because there were moments when we genuinely didn't know what the future would look like. Today, he's rebuilding an immune system that belongs to his dad. He's slowly reclaiming childhood. And we're slowly learning what life after transplant looks like.

This October, I'll walk 42kms through the night in the All Night Long challenge. Every km represents the journey families walk long after hospital visiting hours end. The sleepless nights. The uncertainty. The waiting. The hope. I'm walking because I've seen exactly where donations go. I've watched them become research. I've watched research become clinical trials. And I've watched those clinical trials become opportunities for children like Taite.

If my 42 kms can help another family hear the words, "There's a new treatment we'd like to offer your child," then every step will be worth it. Because six months ago, we placed our son's future in the hands of science, medicine and an incredible team of people determined to change what's possible. Today, we're still here because of them. And tomorrow, another family will need them too.