IT’S every child’s dream but for Ellie Inglis it was her final wish before dying of cancer – to see her house turned into a Christmas wonderland.
As the 17-year-old stepped out of the car, her face lit up as brightly as the twinkling tree on her driveway that shone out across her neighbourhood.
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Mum Maria Georgiou, 46, tells Sun Health: “I hadn’t seen her smile like that in such a long time. She felt so, so special. She told me it was one of the best days of her life.”
Ellie, from Catford, South East London, died three weeks later, on January 11, 2022.
Maria says: “We’d actually switched the lights off that day [on one of her visits home from her hospice]. She kind of looked up and was like, ‘Oh, the lights are off’. And I said, ‘Well, you know, Christmas is finished now’. It was that day that she passed away.”
Ellie had, for more than two years, fought Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of blood cancer her doctors had said was “highly treatable”.
It had started with cold-like symptoms that Maria, like any parent, assumed were nothing serious.
Ellie would later begin treatment for cancer, but by September 2021 had exhausted all options and was told by her consultant to “go and live life”.
It was thanks to the Make-A-Wish Foundation that one of her last wishes, for her home to be transformed into a Christmas wonderland, came true.
The charity fulfils the wishes of critically ill children. But almost 1,200 are on a waiting list for their wish to be granted, which is why the charity is appealing for donations.
It asks parents to imagine how they would feel if this Christmas was their child’s last.
Each year, nearly 9,000 children aged three to 17 are diagnosed with an illness making them eligible for a once-in-a-lifetime wish — that’s around one child every hour.
Recalling the day Ellie was diagnosed in May 2019, aged 15, education writer Maria says: “We’d gone from what we thought to be a cold and a cough, to a few blood tests — to being told that.”
Ellie had developed a persistent cold and a fluctuating high temperature, but Maria says: “She’d also lost weight and was very thin. She’d always been slight but suddenly had clearly lost a lot of weight.
“At the same time, though, she’d gone through this growth spurt. It was difficult to know what was going on. Her skin was very pale. We thought she might be anaemic.”
Aspiring artist
The morning Ellie was booked in for a GP appointment at her local hospital, she found a lump in her armpit and felt really itchy — signs of blood cancer Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
But doctors were particularly alarmed by Ellie’s high heart rate. She was taken to A&E for blood tests.
But Maria adds: “At no point was I thinking, this is something really, really serious. I found it strange. I’d heard adverts on the radio saying, ‘If you’ve got a continuous cough, get it checked out.’ But kids get colds and coughs all the time.”
Maria called Ellie’s dad, Bradley Inglis, 49, from whom she is separated, and told him to come to the hospital.
By the end of the day, the pair were taken to a separate room and informed of the doctors’ suspicions that Ellie had Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
It affects 2,200 people in the UK every year, most commonly women in their early twenties and men in their late seventies.
But Ellie was not told she had it until a formal diagnosis was confirmed.
Maria recalls: “I said I’d like to tell her. Ellie was a shy, gentle soul, and I knew there was a certain way to break things to her.
“Her grandad had died just a few years previous of cancer, so I didn’t want her to hear, ‘You’ve got cancer’ and panic that she would die. Hodgkin’s lymphoma is one of the most curable cancers, and that’s what they told us.”
Charity lit up lives
Statistics confirm it is not one of cancer’s deadliest forms. Of the 310 deaths per year, more than half are in the over 75s.
It was expected Ellie would only need three months of chemotherapy, which she began in June 2019. But she was still being treated that Christmas. “At that point, things started being a little bit different,” says Maria.
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“She started getting infections and we’d have to go straight to hospital because her immune system was so low.”
Hodgkin’s lymphoma affects the lymphatic system, which is part of the immune system, and the start of 2020 brought news that a stubborn area of cancer on Ellie’s chest was not budging despite chemotherapy, radio-therapy and immunotherapy.
This led to the drastic action of a stem-cell transplant in October 2020, so Ellie could receive higher doses of chemotherapy.
But, after two-and-a-half months in isolation, to protect her from infections, Ellie was told it had not worked as well as hoped.
Doctors persisted with more treatment as Ellie took a year out of education, applying to go to sixth form in September 2021. But Maria says: “We got to the September and they said there was nothing else they could medically do. The doctor was upset but said, ‘You never know, sometimes miracles happen’.
“We both knew what it meant. The con-sultant said to her, ‘Enjoy your life. Do what you’ve always wanted to do’.”
Ellie, an aspiring artist, was determined to go to sixth form like her friends had.
Unbelievably, much of the time she had spent outside the hospital she had been studying. When she then became too frail to attend sixth form, two weeks into term, she continued to log on virtually — with the help of a robot camera linked to her laptop.
Maria explains: “Her classmates would carry the robot from class to class, they were really protective of it.”
IT’S RARE BUT CHILDREN DO GET CANCER. LOOK OUT FOR…
A CANCER diagnosis is most common in adults, particularly those aged over 75.
Children, from birth to age 14, and young people – 15-24 years – each account for less than one per cent of new cancer cases, says Cancer Research UK.
But it does happen, and it’s important to be aware of the signs . . .
KIDS: THERE are around 1,900 new cases of childhood cancer every year, according to Children with Cancer UK. Around one child in 500 will develop some form of cancer by the age of 14 years.
Fifty years ago, three-quarters of children diagnosed with cancer died.
But today 84 per cent survive their disease for five years or more.
Around 235 children in the UK lose their lives to cancer every year.
TEENS: EVERY day, seven young people in the UK hear the words “you have cancer”, according to the Teenage Cancer Trust – that’s 2,600 a year.
But research by the charity has found that just 17 per cent of 13 to 24-year-olds know all five of the main warning signs of cancer in young people.
These are:
- Tiredness
- Persistent pain
- Unexplained weight loss
- Changes to moles
- Lumps and swellings.
Around 270 15 to 24-year-olds die of cancer each year.
MOST COMMON TYPES: FOR those up to the age of 14, brain and spinal tumours are the most common, followed by leukaemias. For those aged 15 to 24, those types are also relatively common, but lymphomas account for one in five cases. The symptoms of these conditions can commonly be mistaken for other illnesses.
BRAIN TUMOURS: SYMPTOMS vary, but in both children and teenagers they may include balance and coordination problems, a change in vision or behaviour, fits or seizures, vomiting, headaches and abnormal eye movements.
It can cause an abnormal head position in children, and delayed puberty in teens.
LEUKAEMIAS: CAN cause anaemia, which causes tiredness, feeling dizzy or out of breath, and paleness.
Bruising more easily, unusual bleeding, such as from the nose or gums, and a rash of purple spots are also signs.
Other symptoms include frequent infections, swollen lymph nodes, sweating and stomach pain.
LYMPHOMAS: THE two main types are Hodgkin’s, and non-Hodgkin.
Symptoms of the former include a swollen lymph node, usually in the neck, armpit or groin, a cough or breathlessness, fever, sweats, itching and weight loss.
For non-Hodgkin, additional symptoms include stomach pains and feeling over-full after a meal.
Those friends also knitted the robot a hat like Ellie’s, which she wore after losing her hair during chemotherapy.
Maria even says: “On the day Ellie passed away, she’d logged in to her lessons. Her symptoms were getting worse, but throughout that whole time she never once complained.
“She was always just striving to be happy. We didn’t talk about whether it was the end. We were taking each day as it came, enjoying each day.
“We went for walks, went to the Christmas lights in London’s West End.” Admiring Christmas lights had been a family tradition, driving around their neighbourhood in the car when the kids were little.
“They’d say, ‘Oh, can we do that with our house?’ Maria recalls. “And I’d say, ‘Maybe one day.’ I wanted to do it for them, but I couldn’t.”
Ellie was so kind that the Christmas before her death, she raised money to help a local taxi service take families on tours of the lights in central London. She had been concerned with the amount of attention she had received at the expense of her younger brother,
James, now 18, and wanted to help other siblings in his position.
So, having already been in touch with Make-A-Wish, it was then time for Ellie to decide hers at the end of 2021 — and the choice was obvious.
She was always just striving to be happy. We didn’t talk about whether it was the end. We were taking each day as it came, enjoying each day.
Maria says: “Ellie wished for the house to be lit up like a Christmas wonderland.
“The ‘wish granters’ also asked her to create a wish list on Amazon which was put out for donations. So in the lead-up to her wish being granted, there were little gifts arriving every day. It made it magical.”
The house was decorated in secret while Ellie was at hospital, with garlands, lights and model reindeer. A giant wish-tree lit with dozens of glowing stars was put up in the driveway.
“You just couldn’t believe it was our house,” says Maria. “Someone had posted on Facebook that there’s this incredible tree, so people were coming from all over to see it and were able to donate to Make-A-Wish.”
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HOW TO DONATE TO MAKE A WISH
- Text WISH to 70111 to donate £3 a month.
- To make a one-off donation, visit make-a-wish.org.uk/donate/make-a-donation.
- You can also fundraise, volunteer or sign up to a challenge to help. For more details, see make-a-wish.org.uk.
Just days after Christmas, Ellie then moved to a hospice, where she would pass away on January 11.
She had barely any appetite that day, and had just preparing for a bath and boardgames when she died in her wheelchair — Maria initially thinking she had fainted.
“She went really peacefully,” says Maria. “I don’t think I could ask for anything more.
“Ultimately, she was a teenager, and I knew that she would look at stuff on her phone. I do wonder whether she was looking up what happens at ‘the end’.
“I was given a leaflet at the hospital but I didn’t open it until after she died, and it had all these indicators. I was glad I hadn’t opened it, and I preferred we just carried on and got on with life and enjoyed it.
“It was quite shocking, because I really wasn’t expecting it to happen on that day, and it was like she’d finished everything she needed to do, and she was happy with that. But I feel like she did know.”
Though Christmas is now bittersweet for her family, Ellie’s festive wish left a legacy. Maria says: “Her memory lives on, not just in our minds, in everyone who saw the house.”
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