Testimonials

We made contact with Life Spring not long after we brought our daughter home from hospital after we were told our 6 month old baby girl would die within a couple of months.

Our daughter Kayla was born a healthy little girl. It wasn’t until she was about 3 months of age when she started showing symptoms of a disease eventually diagnosed as Krabbe disease, a genetic degenerative neurological condition that generally takes the lives of babies before the age of two.

Once diagnosed Kayla’s care was palliative. The disease is rare, with the symptoms variable & unpredictable. Our only choice was to make Kayla as comfortable as we could. The palliative care team from the Sydney Children’s Hospital were wonderful and always available to us but we found that there was only so much that all the medications she was prescribed could do for her. This left us constantly chasing her ever-changing symptoms. We initially contacted Life Spring for some form of counselling to help us get through what we had to face. We never thought that any alternative medicine would benefit Kayla but we were willing to try anything to keep her comfortable.

From the moment we met Debbie and the girls from Life Spring, we knew we made the right decision to let them into our lives. We had a counsellor, Sally; visit once a week, for which we will be forever grateful. We did have a lot of family and friend support, but to be able to talk to someone that had some experience in what we were going thought without having to protect their feelings was invaluable.

Debbie also provided us with some homeopathic remedies, to help us deal with the stress that had come into our lives as well as get some rest. Kayla was given a number of remedies to try and decrease her secretions to make her more comfortable that were very successful.

On top of the homeopathic remedies, Kayla was visited once a week by Peta, a reflexologist. Both Kayla and ourselves always looked forward to Peta’s visits and Kayla loved having her feet done. Peta helped reduce the swelling in Kayla’s legs and generally made her a relaxed baby. We were very lucky for Peta to also give us a treatment, which initially we were sceptical about, but would highly recommend to anyone.

We lost our Kayla at 11 months of age. With the help of Life Spring, we spent the last 5 months of her life in the comfort of our own home. It was invaluable to spend quality time with our girl surrounded by a lot of honest and personal support.

The Life Spring girls worked together with our palliative care doctors to give Kayla the best possible care that was available.  It’s very hard to let people into your life when you’re going through such a devastating situation. We knew we wouldn’t have Kayla with us for long so we wanted to spend every second with her. With help from Debbie and the girls from Life Spring we got to spend that time knowing we were doing everything we could to make her time as comfortable as possible.

- Kellie and Adrian, Dee Why