Steve LeBlanc

1 week ago | villagereport.ca | Steve LeBlanc

MILTON - While not easily acknowledged, there’s a certain difficulty that comes from seeing – or interacting with – medically-complex children. It’s an understandably natural response, but one missing from Megan Walker’s DNA. “I remember my grandma telling me, ‘You know you’re the only one who will look at a child with a trac in their throat and think they’re cute’,” recalls the lifelong Miltonian and pediatric nurse, of her high school volunteer time at her hometown Darling Home for Kids.

1 week ago | oakvillenews.org | Steve LeBlanc

While not easily acknowledged, there’s a certain difficulty that comes from seeing – or interacting with – medically-complex children. It’s an understandably natural response, but one missing from Megan Walker’s DNA. “I remember my grandma telling me, ‘You know you’re the only one who will look at a child with a trac in their throat and think they’re cute’,” recalls the lifelong Miltonian and pediatric nurse, of her high school volunteer time at her hometown Darling Home for Kids.

2 weeks ago | miltontoday.ca | Steve LeBlanc

While not easily acknowledged, there’s a certain difficulty that comes from seeing – or interacting with – medically-complex children. It’s an understandably natural response, but one missing from Megan Walker’s DNA. “I remember my grandma telling me, ‘You know you’re the only one who will look at a child with a trac in their throat and think they’re cute’,” recalls the lifelong Miltonian and pediatric nurse, of her high school volunteer time at her hometown Darling Home for Kids.

2 weeks ago | miltontoday.ca | Steve LeBlanc

Lucie Stangroom knew this day might come. But when older sister Julie-Anne gifted her with a kidney in 1999, there was far more attention given to the donation’s life-changing possibilities than the organ’s potential time limit. “When they tell you ‘You might need another one,’ it sits in the back of your mind, but you think ‘Ah, that’s never going to happen’,” admits the lifelong Miltonian. “When I got to that stage, it’s like ‘Wow, that really does happen’. It floored me for about two weeks.

2 weeks ago | oakvillenews.org | Steve LeBlanc

It’s known as the disease of a thousand faces – a harsh reality of which Megan Friedman and Sunita Mandi are intimately familiar. The ‘Lupus Warrior’ friends contracted the complex autoimmune disease around the same stage in life and have endured emotional hardships as unrelenting as the physical symptoms themselves. But the differences far outweigh the similarities, as sufferers know only too well.