Behind The Wish - Alison Walton

I was not sick at all before I got diagnosed. I was in Year 11 and was at school one day and my neck was quite swollen so I went to the doctors that afternoon. And they said to go to hospital.

That doctor that night in the emergency department said she had an appointment for me the next day with the haematologist. I didn’t think much of it and the next day the haematologist said ‘yep I am pretty sure you have non-Hodgkins lymphoma’.
So they did some testing and biopsies and a scan. I wasn’t very sick at all but, surprisingly, I had stage 4 non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

I was given two options by the haematologist. Two choices of chemo. One had a better success rate. While the other wasn’t so good. But it still wasn’t as bad as other cancers. They say if you are going to get cancer then the best one is non-Hodgkins.

I chose the more aggressive chemo as it had the better success rate. But it is a pretty intensive chemo so I think after one day of chemo I stopped going to school.

I spent most of the time either in hospital or just at home. The chemo treatment was about five months.

I was 16 and could be treated in a children’s hospital in Sydney which was six hours away or at a local hospital, but I would have to be treated as an adult so that’s what I did. There were no other kids around.

The chemo made me just so sick. I think lost about 15kgs in two weeks.
I was so unwell that I really didn’t have energy to even want friends to come over to the house or visit me in hospital. The hardest thing is the complete disruption to your everyday life.

But the chemo did kill the cancer very well.

I missed the one term of Year 11. I was supposed to start Year 12 at the end of that year so I just missed one term of Year 11 and one term of Year 12.

I had heard of Make-A-Wish but didn’t know a lot about them. I guess no one ever thinks at 16 they are going to be a Make-A-Wish kid.

The medical team usually puts kids in contact with Make-A-Wish.

I remember Make-A-Wish people coming to the hospital and chatting. I felt so unwell so I didn’t want to go away on a trip. I didn’t really want to do anything but I had Year 12 coming up and I really enjoyed school and wanted to go well. Back then we all didn’t have laptops so I thought that would be a good thing to help me through Year 12.

I really wanted to go to university after school, so I thought a laptop would be useful and it was: it got me through two different uni degrees.

For my wish, in about 2009, I got a Mac and it was a larger size. It was huge. It had lots of games.

I think it got me through 12 years which was fantastic.

I think what’s really special about the wish is that it gives you something to feel special about and to look forward to … a lot of things are about you but because you are unwell that’s the focus.

It enabled me to have a plan, a plan to finish school and finish uni. It was about my future.

Even though I missed some of Year 12 I still did quite well and got into a Bachelor of Nutrition and Dietetics and did a Masters of Public Health.

I now work for NSW Health.

I joined Make-A-Wish in May 2023.

My own wish was very cool and I always thought I would love to do this for other children but the time never seemed right.

After I finished school I moved to the Gold Coast for a year, where we actually did a fundraiser for Make-A-Wish. A bunch of friends and I went in the City to Surf Run. There were quite a few of my friends who had all had childhood cancers so we all joined a team together and did the run.

I always wanted to give back in some way. After living on the Gold Coast I moved to Newcastle to keep studying. I had considered joining Make-A-Wish there but I was still moving around, like coming home when I had uni holidays. I just had that feeling I wasn’t in one place enough long enough to join a Make-A-Wish Branch.

Once I moved back to the NSW mid-north coast, which is where I am originally from, and bought a house I thought it was a great time to join Make-A-Wish. I went online and saw they needed volunteers so I applied and was interviewed shortly after.

I am so glad I joined. I was definitely a bit hesitant, thinking do I have the skills to go and talk to families and children? Even though I do that at work all the time. But I was still worried because the Make-A-Wish children are so vulnerable and I don’t want to say the wrong thing.

But the onboarding process to become a volunteer gives you so much confidence you can do it. And there is so much support available when you join a Branch.

Picture: Alison (left) completed the City to Surf Run with friends to raise money for Make-A-Wish.

The Port Macquarie Branch is fabulous. You always go on Wish Captures with another person. The two that I have done have been with the President Tammy Frater, so having that support to talk through the wish before you meet the Wish child is so useful.

The first wish capture I did was a non-verbal girl where we had to rely on input from the parents, who were reading her cues.

The second wish I did with Tammy was a local wish for a 16 or 17-year-old boy. That was just like a totally different experience from the first wish. All wishes are so unique. His wish was to go to Sydney and have a weekend away with his friends and his mum.

He really wants to go to a Sushi restaurant, which is something we don’t have locally. He loves basketball, so he wants to go shopping for basketball caps and clothes.

I think it’s really rewarding being able to build a connection with these children and to hear what they love. I think during those Make-A-Wish captures it’s not just about going in there and saying ‘what do you wish for’ but it’s about getting to know the family, the child’s story, and what things make the Wish child really happy.

Then you can have that anticipation phase of the wish when we can send them little things related to their wish to build up excitement. The memorable impact it does have on these children is going to last a lifetime. It’s not something they will forget. It’s something that makes them feel really special.

At first, I didn’t know whether being a Wish child myself would be a good thing or bad thing. I thought if I get children who are just sad do I want to do this? But I think it’s so nice to have gone through it so I have an idea of how they are feeling.

I just want to really listen to the children because I realise how special it is for them, and really put in the effort to capture what the wish is they want.

All the kids are very different. Some are very shy, like that 16-year-old boy I met – two random women coming into his house and asking him what he likes. You just have to slowly build rapport and make sure your read their notes before you meet them.

I think it’s really important we put in the effort to get to know the child.

We were just chatting last night at our Branch meeting that we need a bunch of people to step up and take a role. I said I will have a think, I can definitely do something. I’ll see what everyone else wants to do and go from there. We have about 10 people in the Branch, we have some people join.

I am about between halfway between Sydney and Brisbane. Our volunteers are quite spread out. Which is good when it comes to the wishes, we can send whoever is closer. We do our meetings online but we are trying to organise a real life catch up as a lot of us haven’t met in real life yet.

I think the whole Make-A-Wish Wish experience changes you as a person. Whether it’s the experience I have gone through as a child or talking to families as a volunteer, Make-A-Wish is just a really good reminder that you don’t know what someone is going through.

From the outside plenty of these Wish children, you wouldn’t necessarily know they have an illness. And you wouldn’t know by looking at the families that they have a sick child at home. Or that they are full-time carers.

There’s a lot of people going through a lot of really difficult things. So you just need to be really kind.

You really never know what other people are going through. I think from having my own wish I think I can empathise a lot with the kids and families. I can probably see things through different lenses.

It’s so nice getting to know the Wish families on a personal level. There’s so many similarities and differences. All families are sort of the same – regardless of whether there is an unwell child is there or not – they all have challenges.

Seeing how happy the children are that we are there for them and paying so much attention to them. It’s not very often someone comes into your life and says ‘we want to grant you anything you want’ and ‘do you want to go on a holiday or meet someone famous’.

It's great hearing such positive stories from the other volunteers. They talk about the excitement and show the photos. It’s so rewarding to hear stories about how meaningful the wish was for the child and their family.

You do get really nice volunteers in an organisation like MAW. They really want to be there for the right reasons. And that’s really special.

I think the feelings you get from Make-A-Wish are very different from those you can get anywhere else. You might do other things that make you happy but seeing the joy of someone else who is going through a difficult time is a kind of joy that rubs off on everyone else – not just the volunteers involved but the whole Branch.

It is so rewarding getting to go and talk to families. We are the lucky ones, not the child getting a wish. We are very lucky to get to go and connect with the families and meet the different children and understand what they really enjoy then grant the wish.

You’re bringing joy to the families – the parents and siblings – not just the child.

Volunteering for Make-A-Wish is so different from work. I think with Make-A-Wish, it doesn’t feel anything like work: it’s more doing something you really enjoy.

It doesn’t feel like a burden. It feels like a privilege.

Because most of the volunteers have full-time jobs, it’s usually Saturday or Sunday we go and do the wish captures. I think it’s really rewarding and that's why people are more than willing to give up their weekends.