Will you help care for patients too sick to go home this Christmas?

Your kindness will help bring precious moments of pure joy to people fighting for their lives.

Let me ask if you’ll lend your caring heart to the Mater once more…

Because right now, there are patients here with us who – despite our very best efforts — will be too sick to be at home with their families this Christmas.

Please, will you give a gift today and help care for some of our sickest patients this Christmas?

Your kindness this Christmas can make such a difference

I want you to know that my team and myself do everything we possibly can to try and get patients home for Christmas. That can often mean giving them blood transfusions on Christmas Eve.

But even then, it’s not always enough.

You can imagine how awful it is to tell a patient, someone who’s been holding onto hope they’ll be home with their family on Christmas Day —

“I’m so sorry, but I don’t think you can go home for Christmas…”

Of course, deep down, they know it already. They know how sick they feel. But you can understand how these words still feel like a punch in the gut.

We had this one young lad here last year, he was only 17. He was crushed that he’d be in hospital on Christmas Day.

Honestly, the disappointment on his face would have broken your heart.

Please, will you give today and help us go over and above to make Christmas special for someone like that young lad, too sick to go home?

As head nurse here, I’ve seen with my own eyes what your compassion and generosity to the Mater Hospital Foundation can do…

I’ve seen the moments of pure joy and relief your love brings to people when they’re too sick to leave the hospital, even for one day.

Anything you can give this Christmas will be received with the most sincere and heartfelt gratitude by all of us here, believe me.

I can’t tell you how much it means to us to know your heart is here with us on Christmas Day as we care for some of the sickest people in Ireland.

Everybody who comes into our ward is incredibly unwell, but they’re striving with every part of themselves to live.

And they’re grateful for every little thing we can do for them. For every moment of joy and happiness your kindness makes possible…

And there are genuine moments of joy…

There was one young girl with us last Christmas. Katie, her name was. She had Leukemia, and was very unwell with the side effects of chemo.

The nurses found out she was a huge Gaelic football fan, and obsessed with the Dublin team. Now, she didn’t know this, but the Dublin team come to the Mater almost every year. It’s something the Mater Hospital Foundation arranges. When we told Katie ‘her team’ was coming to see her, she was so excited! She was saying —’Oh my God, they’re so handsome.’ It was so sweet.

She’d lost all her hair by that point. But she wanted us to do her make-up so she looked her best, you know. Anyway, they came in and sat with her, and I tell you, she was smiling ear to ear. It made her day — it made her year!

I so wish you could have been there. Her eyes were sparkling like diamonds. As sick as she was, it was so beautiful to see her so happy.

Please say you’ll give a gift today if you can. Your kindness this Christmas will not only help provide the very best of care for people like Katie, too sick to go home…

… but you’ll also be helping to bring precious and profound moments of pure joy to people fighting for their lives.

Wishing you all the health and happiness in the world,

Nurse Manager, St Vincent’s Cancer and
Haematology Ward, The Mater Hospital

Thank you for being the heart of our hospital and for giving what you can.