The staff of a Dublin hospital - with a little help from Colin Farrell - have banded together to help raise funds for their colleague's daughter who is battling a rare brain tumour.
Marlie Meehan, 3, was diagnosed with ETMR (embryonal tumors with multilayered rosettes) - an incredibly aggressive form of cancer that affects just one in 700,000 children - last August.
Bright and bubbly Marlie has since fought through multiple surgeries and bouts of chemotherapy over the past few months - but has kept her trademark smile on her face and elephant obsession going throughout it all.
Marlie's journey is far from over though, so with more treatments and a potential trip to Germany on the horizon, the staff at the Mater Private Hospital - where Marlie's mam Jenny works - came together to try to ease the financial burden on her and dad Craig.
Kevin Scott, a colleague of Jenny's and the man behind the fundraiser, told Dublin Live how he found out about Marlie's illness while at home during the pandemic.
He said: “I would chat to them in work all the time, Jenny would tell me about Marlie, but during Covid I wasn’t in.
“I found out through my partner, who's also called Jenny. She told me Marlie was very sick, she had headaches and vomiting.
“She was taken to a doctor and they did scans on her.
"And they found out she has this thing called ETMR. It’s a really rare form of cancer that affects children - one in 700,000 children get it, it’s extremely rare."
As Marlie fought against the disease, mam Jenny has had to take time off work to care for her, and the financial costs have piled up - so Jenny's work colleagues had an idea.
"We wanted to try to raise a little bit of money," Kevin noted.
“We thought we could maybe raise a few thousand.
“Originally we had it at about €5,000, and we thought if we could get that, it’d be amazing."
But a little help from a local charity and a special video message from an unexpected Hollywood source was able to turbocharge their donations bid.
Kevin explained: “A charity called Oscar’s Kids, they work with children with cancer, they’re incredible, they do amazing work - they put up this video.
“Colin Farrell actually sent Marlie a message!
“Marlin is obsessed with elephants, everything is elephants with Marlie.
“She watches Dumbo every day, both the animated version and the live action version.
“And Colin Farrell does work with Oscar’s Kids, so he ended up sending her a personal video message.
“He talked about Dumbo and he’s going to send her some stuff from the film that he has.
“That video was on their Instagram, and literally within ten minutes they had our fundraiser up on their Instagram story.
“The GoFundMe just exploded, I just kept getting a ding ding ding. We’ve only had it up for five days, and we’re at €19,400.”
Kevin noted that initially, Marlie's parents were kept out of the loop when it came to the fundraiser.
He said that the staff all started it simply to try to ease one burden, picturing how they would feel if one of their own children was affected by something similar.
But once it blew up, it became too big to keep a surprise.
He said: “We have a daughter, she’s only ten months old, and to think about that happening to you… it really hit home for us.
“Like with any parent finding out news like that they’ve just been trying to cope. It just absolutely rocked their whole world.
“They didn’t know about the fundraiser initially, we didn’t want them to have to run a fundraiser as well as everything else.
“So we’re totally taking care of this, and we’ll just say ‘here’s the funds’.
“Jenny, Marlie’s mum, sent me a message saying she just can’t believe it, she’s absolutely touched by everyone who’s helped.”
And Kevin wants to continue pushing with their fundraising drive, saying that while what they have done so far is excellent, Marlie's future remains uncertain.
"We’re doing so well," he said.
"But we have no idea what treatment Marlie will have to go through, because it’s such a rare form of cancer.
“Craig, Marlie’s father, was saying there’s a possibility she may have to travel to Germany to get this state-of-the-art treatment for this particular form of cancer.
“Jenny isn’t working at the moment either so she can look after Marlie.
“If we can help them in any way with this it’d be absolutely amazing.”
You can donate to help Marlie by clicking here.
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