Description

In 2013 Quinn Hautapu presented to hospital
with the seemingly minor symptom of a limp
arm, within a short time she was on a Life Flight
to Wellington to work out the cause of a massive bleed on the brain. She was seven years old.
A month later, after brain surgery and numerous scans, the Hautapu family was given the
shocking news that Quinn had brain cancer.
What followed was 12 months of the most
intense, emotional and difficult time that a
family can experience.
From further brain surgery to remove a
tumour, to radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and
physical therapy, Quinn spent most of the next
year in and out of Starship Hospital, while her
family moved into Ronald McDonald House
close by.
They were away from their Palmerston North
home for most of the year. The entire time it
was uncertain if Quinn would survive.
In a day-by-day journal, Quinn’s mother, Roanne
Barnes Hautapu, has written a profoundly moving account of what the family went through,
expressing the overwhelming trauma and gruelling realities of dealing with childhood cancer