Zayne

2026 Recipient

Zayne’s story from his mum Mykaela:

On Thursday the 15th of May at 8.16pm, our whole world stopped and changed in an instant.  

Zayne had been having ongoing viral symptoms like a runny nose, cough, tiredness, leg aches, bruising that wasn’t going away and he had lost weight. I took him to the GP several times and had 3 PCR tests that all came back negative. I asked our GP for a blood test explaining the persistent symptoms and Zayne had the blood test at 10am the same morning. At 8.16pm that night, just after I’d put my bright, beautiful, loving, happy 3-year-old to bed, I noticed two missed calls and messages on my phone, and then the phone rang again. The man on the end introduced himself as being from the pathology lab and something in the tone of his voice instantly made me feel sick.  He explained Zayne had critical blood results. His haemoglobin was 54 and his white cells were attacking his red cells. and he then said the words that I’ll never forget “acute leukaemia “. I fell to my knees, and he told me to get to the John Hunter children’s Hospital immediately, and that they would be waiting for us.  

From then on, life was a blur. I rang Zayne’s dad Matt, who lives and worked in Victoria and told him to come immediately. I scooped my sweet baby out of his bed, threw things in a bag and my father-in-law drove me to the hospital and my mum met us there. 

By midday the following day his diagnosis was confirmed. Acute high risk lymphoblastic Leukaemia. His little body was 87% full of leukaemia and he had less than 3 weeks to live unless we started chemotherapy immediately. By midday the amazing oncology department at the John Hunter had Zayne’s team coordinated and everything went straight into action. Our hearts were completely shattered and heads spinning, we were terrified and knew that we were in for the ride of our lives, but there was no other option than to fight. It was literally ‘do or die’. The other option wasn’t an option. 

Zayne started chemotherapy the very same day. It has been far from an easy ride. Zayne’s high risk chemotherapy treatments have been hard on his little body and at times debilitating. It has meant long hospital stays, lingering illnesses, countless high temperatures, a liver upset which started to make his eyes go yellow and a central line infection. There has been added illnesses caused by the chemotherapy, including a fungal infection in his lungs which meant we were at a high risk of Zayne losing his life. Zayne spent 8.5 weeks in hospital continuously through his second round of chemotherapy and the end of his first. It took 10 weeks to get rid of rhinovirus and enterovirus which lingered in his system for so long as he didn’t have the immune system to get rid of it. Zayne has had countless general anaesthetics, several CT scans, a PET scan, ultrasounds, X-rays, blood and platelet transfusions, developed asthma and had continuous skin reactions as a result of chemotherapy and the medications for the fungal infection, with a heightened sensitivity to sun, he has recently struggled with burns to his arms, face , neck and hands which have been extremely painful.  

Zayne is the youngest of our 4 children. Zayne has 2 brothers, Tanner aged 5, Colt aged 7 and a big sister Ruby aged 14. The kids have all struggled with being away from each other and the other kids miss their mum too. Zayne idolises his siblings and when he is away, he counts down the days, hours or minutes until he sees them again.  

We have all had to change every aspect of our lives to adapt to the new normal, which includes accepting the hospital as our second home. Zayne’s care team have become like a second family; they have held him through the very worst days and laughed with him on his best. They understand and let him scream it out on the bad days and help to make every day a reason to smile.  

Zayne is bright, loving, clever, caring, quick witted, thoughtful, sassy, cheeky and your typical busy chaotic little boy who loves all things monster trucks and his favourite superhero Spider-Man!  

He makes friends wherever he seems to go and loves to spread his love and chaos. He always puts his own spin on things in order to make him feel like he has somewhat control left, whether it’s riding his scooter to treatment or playing pranks on his nurses.  

Zayne’s fight has just started but his strength, determination and cheeky personality amaze us every day.