About Emma and our Foundation.
Emma’s Warriors was set up as a way to pay forward the love and support Emma received throughout her wellness journey.
About Emma’s Warriors
Founded by 13-year-old Emma Walsh, who was diagnosed with Leukemia in 2022, Emma’s Warriors began after Emma found herself navigating long and frequent hospital stays with her family by her side.
Emma’s goal is to make life a little bit easier for other tweens and teens who are also going through a difficult health crisis. Together with her parents, Brendan and Alex, and her brother Will and sister Isabelle, Emma hopes her foundation that she has created with her family will help other children in need. One day soon, Emma aims to make her Care Kits available to sick children nation-wide.
You can help Emma achieve her goal to help seriously ill tweens and teens
be a little more comfortable during their long hospital stay. Click the link below to learn more or join the tribe by donating today.
How it all began
In June 2022, Emma and her family were living a very normal life. What started out as a swollen gland, became every parent’s worst nightmare as Emma was eventually diagnosed with an acute form of leukemia, which had impacted more than eight in every 10 cells of her body.
Emma’s life and the lives of her parents and siblings were forever changed by that moment of diagnosis in the oncologist’s office. This would be the very beginning of countless nights spent in hospital in the desperate attempt to treat Emma’s cancer.
In July 2022, Emma and her family were told by specialists that she only had weeks to live. She was rushed into an aggressive and intense course of chemotherapy, lumbar punctures, bone marrow aspirations and blood transfusions.
A lot of Love and Determination
Over the next 18months, the John Hunter Children’s Hospital became Emma and her family’s second home. Emma was facing the battle of her life and was on the strongest drugs possible and the world that the Walsh family once knew, was indefinitely snatched away.
A new reality now existed for the Walsh family – one filled with intense treatments, long hospital stays, no school, no work, and no contact with anyone except the immediate family to keep the bugs at bay.
During this time, family, friends, and strangers, all stepped forward to offer unwavering help and support during the darkest moments of Emma and her family’s life.
The Road To Recovery
After a bumpy road to recovery, finally, Emma’s leukemia responded to the intense treatment that she had undergone. Her dedicated family could finally exhale and focus on the future.
Emma is now in the maintenance phase of her illness and she continues to be the warrior that she is. Chemo is taken orally each day and hospital visits are fewer. Physio, hydrotherapy and occupational therapy are helping Emma to build strength to get her walking again.
Emma has started attending school in small amounts and is reconnecting with her friends and learning. She is focused on continuing to help others and Emma and her family appreciate all the silver linings around them and hope to help other seriously ill children as well as their families who face a similar battle to what Emma did.
