For Bacchus Marsh’s Barlow family, every little bit helps. And thanks to the fund-raising efforts of the developer of Stonehill estate, Mark and Kat Barlow can take the first step towards making their home safe for their brave son, Noah.
The family will buy a new bed for Noah, who was born 11 weeks premature and has several rare conditions.
He suffers from multiple allergies and seizures and is tube-fed every few hours. Doctors believe he could have mitochondrial disease, a potentially fatal condition that reduces a body’s ability to produce energy needed to function properly.
Devine Homes raised $6488 at a sub-contractors’ function and received a $3000 donation from employee Ron Huy, who raised the funds at a golf tournament in Tocumwal earlier this year.
Mrs Barlow said the money would go a long way towards making their house more suitable for the three-year-old.
‘‘Noah can’t step up on to a normal bed so we’ll have to get him one built or get him a normal bed and have it modified so he’s able to have his tubes . . . in a way that it’s not going to tangle him up,’’ she says.
Medical bills from private doctors have taken a toll on the family’s finances, despite Noah’s father working 96-hour weeks.
‘‘There’s a whole bunch of stuff we’d love to do, but one step at a time,” Mrs Barlow says. “We’ll save the rest of the money for treatment, because at the moment when it comes to diagnosis we have some doctors say one thing and some doctors say another.’’
The family has spent four weeks this year in hospital. If Noah gets so much as a cold he can require five days in a ward.
‘‘He’s two different children,’’ Mrs Barlow says. ‘‘Some days he screams and shouts and has night terrors, doesn’t communicate and his whole face and body is swollen. He seems like he’s in pain . . . and then the next day he’s like, ‘Let’s go play’.’’
Although ecstatic about the donation, Mrs Barlow says the family is a long way off completing plans for other modifications.
‘‘We’re still in the middle of doing a deck that we started quite some time ago, but my husband doesn’t get a lot of time to work on it,” she says. “And we’re doing ramps out of the house because Noah can’t do stairs.’’
