A child's take on cancer: 'I've slept enough for the rest of my life'


If cancer were a person, 7-year-old Tyler Bisset would tell it to "just go away".

The Whanganui boy has had 760 jabs, tests and treatments in his short life.

At age 3, his family were told he had acute lymphocytic​ leukaemia:  a cancer of the blood and bone marrow and the most common type found in children.

Tyler Bisset, 7, has collected 760 beads from cancer treatments that have lasted four years.
SUPPLIED
Tyler Bisset, 7, has collected 760 beads from cancer treatments that have lasted four years.

Initially, doctors thought they would be home in a week, his grandmother and caregiver Michelle Bisset said.

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Instead, he has spent the next four years of his life in treatment.

The face and diary entries from cancer survivor Tyler Bisset, 7, will grace Wellington billboards this month as part of a Child Cancer Foundation campaign.
SUPPLIED
The face and diary entries from cancer survivor Tyler Bisset, 7, will grace Wellington billboards this month as part of a Child Cancer Foundation campaign.

"Dear Diary, today, I learned the name of my cancer," he wrote one day.

"I can't remember before I had cancer. I was too little," another entry says.

And another heartbreaking entry reads: "Now I have cancer, I don't see my friends much."

At his sickest, his shrunken frame couldn't support his own weight.

Tyler wants to be a fireman when he grows up, and wore a fireman's suit through many of his gruelling treatments.

One day he wrote, "I think I've slept enough for the rest of my life".

He finished treatment in January 2016, and has joined in with normal school life again. 

Tyler is one of four Kiwi children who will have their faces and diary entries displayed on posters around the country and digital billboards in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington through March in an effort to put a face to those fighting child cancer.

Roughly three children a week were diagnosed with cancer in New Zealand, Child Cancer Foundation chief executive Robyn Kiddle said. 

Eighty per cent of them will survive. 

Bisset said the support the family received, both from the foundation and doctors, was "top notch", but she confessed there were times of darkness and doubt.

"You just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and have faith in the treatment." 

Through March, the foundation wants to raise $750,000 for the support services it provides to families.

The money will go towards providing family support co-ordinators, meeting food and travel cost for families going through treatment, and sending them to one of the foundation's two respite holiday homes.

"It's helping children and parents get through the journey, because it's not planned and every journey is unique," Kiddle said.

There are only two treatment centres, in Auckland and Christchurch, so 70 per cent of families the foundation helps have to travel for treatment. 

To donate, look out for collectors in the community on March 17 and 18, or go online to childcancer.org.nz.

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