Filip Kwasny, 7, from Colchester Essex is dying as a result of Leukaemia
and the little boy has made a final request, asking that he be buried
with his mother so she can look after him in heaven.
He made the wish from his hospital bed in Great Ormond Street Children's
hospital in London where chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant has
failed to cure him...
Doctors have lost hope of saving Filip now that the cancer has spread to
his intestines so they are simply giving him palliative care to make
him comfortable as his life comes to an end.
Filip's mother died of cancer when he was two years and at that same
period he was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis type 1. Luckily, he
recovered from that but was diagnosed with juvenile myelomonocytic
leukaemia (JMML) in September last year. JMML is an accumulation of
abnormal blood cells in the bone marrow.
His father, Piotr Kwasny, 40, is trying to raise £6,500 to bring up his
wife's coffin which has been underground for five years and bury their
son with his mother.
"He says that I'm his angel that is looking after him here and that his
mum will look after him when he is in heaven,' Piotr said from his son's
hospital bed. "I don't know how well he remembers his mother as he was
so young when she passed away, but he has visited her grave when he was
well enough to speak to her. Filip wants to be buried with his mother so
we will need to organise that locally and re-bury them together. He
wants her to look after him. I will only be able to take Filip back to
Poland myself."
Piotr himself is ill with spina bifida, one kidney, diabetes and
hypertension (high blood pressure), so that means he cannot work and
does not have the funds to meet his son's dying wish.
Generous strangers, who heard of the boy's wish, have been donating to
make it possible for him be buried in the same coffin with his mother.
Yesterday, Filip sent a personal thank you from his sick bed to all who
have helped him. Despite being barely able to speak, he said:
"Thanks for helping make my wish come true."
As is expected from a father about to lose a child, Piotr is saddened
by the end that awaits his son soon and laments that his son will not
live to do a number of things other kids get to do.
"This is just a very stressful and distressing time for all of us. I
did not imagine that I would have to bury my child... you shouldn't go
before your child. There is a bell in the Fox Ward outside Filip's room.
Ward patients ring the bell three times when their treatment is done
and they are leaving. Filip, my son, will never get to ring that bell."
More photos below....
