“You’re my go to people!”
Taniesha has faced more challenges than most of us will have to cope with in an entire lifetime. Diagnosed with a congenital heart condition before birth, she also has Downs Syndrome and has undergone a number of serious heart and bowel operations. She tires easily and can’t do as much as other children. Despite it all though, according to her mum Lisa, “she’s full of life, determined to play with every toy in the place and loves dancing and music!”
Having the support of Forget Me Not since before Taniesha was born has been a real lifeline.
“They were involved right from the start,” Lisa says. “They came to my antenatal appointments and helped break down what the doctors were telling us so we could understand. It was a scary time, and Forget Me Not provided the emotional support we needed. They still do.”
In the beginning, it was very hard, Lisa says. “Taniesha wasn’t sleeping so we weren’t sleeping.” Then there were all the medications to get to grips with. “I had to set alarms to remind me when she needed to take which medication, because you’re that busy, you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re that tired, you forget what you need to do.”
Lisa says, “it’s normal to us now. Although anyone looking in on us would be like – ‘how do you cope?!’”
"I don't think we'd have coped without Forget Me Not"
Having Forget Me Not on hand whenever they’ve needed us over the years, has played a vital role in helping Lisa and her family deal with the challenges they’ve faced. “Forget Me Not’s been there throughout and I don’t think, emotionally, we’d have coped otherwise.”
From being a safe place for Taniesha to play: “I don’t feel she’s restricted in what she can do here - there’s always someone to look after her – and everyone understands what she needs” to being a safe place for Taniesha to stay: “when she stays at the hospice for the night I know I can fully relax,” to being there for Taniesha’s older sister too: “Lucy had play therapy which helped her understand why we couldn’t always do what she wanted to do,” Forget Me Not’s been an important fixture in Lisa’s family life.
And we’re always at the end of the phone. “Every time I have an issue, they’re the first people I call. They help explain things, they understand my state of mind and they don’t judge, they just get it.”
“I call Forget Me Not my ‘go to people’, because it’s the first place I go when I need help!”