Pat McCabe doesn't really know who this message is for, but there's a 13-year-old boy somewhere in the United States who he wants to hear it: three-year-old Charli is alive because of you.
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"I'll never get to meet him, but thank you," McCabe says as his voice cracks a little.
This is the story of a beautiful three-year-old girl who is still smiling even after five cycles of chemotherapy, three rounds of immunotherapy, 24 blood transfusions and spending most of the past 15-months in hospital with tubes into her nose and chest.
Not that you should be surprised by Charli's resilience. She is, after all, the daughter of a former ACT Brumbies and Wallabies warrior. Pat McCabe played through the pain of a dislocated shoulder at the 2011 World Cup. He broke his neck twice but made his way back to the highest level. He eventually retired in 2014 after breaking his neck for a third time.
His innate toughness prompted teammates to liken him to the viral "Chuck Norris facts" trend of the early 2000s (some examples if you don't remember: "On the seventh day, God rested. Chuck Norris took over." Or: "The dark is afraid of Chuck Norris".)
The comparison never sat well with a humble McCabe, but clearly Charli is made of the same tough stuff as her dad. And Charli needed every ounce of McCabe tough for her own journey, because this is also the story of an unknown teen, who has no idea his stem-cell donation at birth became the lifeline for a girl who needed it to survive.
McCabe and wife Tammy are sharing the details of Charli's journey as their way of saying thanks to those who have helped them since they first noticed innocuous bruises on their daughter's leg while on a family trip to the South Coast in August 2023.
What they hoped was going to be a routine trip to the emergency room turned into a fight to save Charli's life.
"We umm-ed and ahh-ed about going to emergency. We thought we'd be there for six hours just to find out we were being neurotic parents," McCabe said.
"Charli had been a bit clingy, but didn't have a temperature or any other signs of anything being wrong. But she was flat, so we went and they took her straight in because they thought it might have been meningococcal."
After three hours of observation and blood tests, a doctor emerged.
"He came out and said: 'Your daughter's not very well'. We didn't know if he was joking. He took us into a room and told us she had leukaemia," McCabe says.
"We ended up in an ambulance from Shoalhaven Hospital to Randwick Children's Hospital and we were there for the next 13 or 14 months, spending more than 160 nights in hospital."
Tammy spent every moment with Charli while Pat juggled hospital visits with looking after twins Jack and Olivia while also working as a consultant for Callida.
Charli had been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia - one of the most common forms of cancer. Doctors tried to hit Charli's leukaemia with five cycles of chemotherapy, but couldn't get her into remission.
The treatment was so intense that Charli required morphine and fentanyl drips to manage extremely painful mucositis and other side effects.
Determined to find answers, doctors found unique genetic markers that meant Charli's cancer was resistant to chemotherapy.
"They could have hit it over and over again, but it would never have completely gone away," McCabe says.
The decision was made that Charli needed a bone-marrow transplant. In preparation she had three rounds of immunotherapy and needed to wear a backpack of medicine 24 hours a day for 28 days in a row for each round.
When the immunotherapy, which attacks the specific protein on the leukaemia cells, started to work, doctors said it was time to try to find a match for a bone-marrow transplant.
"They checked the twins - Jack and Olivia - to see if they were a match, but they weren't," McCabe said.
"They started a global search for a match for donor cells and they ended up finding a cord-blood donor from the US that was almost a perfect match for her, the only difference being his blood type.
"That alone is pretty wild. But that boy is 13 now, so his cord had been frozen for that many years."
A cord-blood donation is an alternate method of retrieving stem cells for a bone-marrow transplant. So while Charli's cancer was common, the treatment was not.
A cord-blood donation uses the stem cells of the umbilical cord or placenta of a baby, which is donated at birth. Leukaemia Foundation head of research Bill Stavreski said cord-blood donations were still uncommon in Australia.
"It's a rich source of stem cells because they're quite young so they haven't been exposed like adult stem cells have," Stavreski said.
"We do have three biobanks in Australia, but they're not very big. So in Australia, a cord-blood donation isn't as common as bone-marrow donation or stem-cell blood donation.
"Probably only a single-digit percentage of using a cord-blood donation for leukaemia treatments. In many cases this sort of treatment might be the last resort."
The Luekaemia Foundation - which supports patients and their families as they undergo treatment - says about 150 children under the age of 10 are diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in Australia every year. The survival rate for children can be up to 95 per cent, but Charli's chances changed each time her body rejected treatment.
Her genetic details were put into a system and a match was found. Most of the cord donations in Australia come via Europe or the United States, and the McCabes praised the doctors and nurses at the Kids Cancer Centre at the Sydney Children's Hospital for their help.
"They fly it across and in June she had the transplant. She spent six weeks where she couldn't leave the room," McCabe says.
"They need to completely deplete your existing cells and immune system to get ready for the transplant, so the chemotherapy is incredibly intense.
"One of the treatments meant Charli needed five baths per day to stop her own sweat from burning her skin - that's no fun with any two-year-old, let alone one that's extremely unwell."
McCabe's voice starts to crack again as he recalls Charli being in isolation, too sick to move out of bed.
"[Jack and Olivia] weren't allowed in the room, but they were allowed into the ward. They came and waved through the window, that's how surreal it was for a long time," McCabe says.
Eventually, the treatment began to work, and after more than a year of contemplating the worst, doctors finally delivered some good news a month ago.
"She's cancer free at the moment," McCabe says. "That's pretty amazing. With a bit of luck, we might be through the worst of it."
The McCabes recently made their move to Sydney more permanent to be closer to Charli's doctors in anticipation for ongoing appointments over the coming years.
They have been stunned by the support they've received as word spread of Charli's battle.
Tammy's mum Robyn came to Australia from South Africa, and McCabe's parents Terry and Pauline were there for every step.
McCabe's mates at the Warringah Rats - the club he played for before joining the Brumbies - played their part when 32 players, partners and officials donated blood.
"Those donations make an incredible difference. We saw that," McCabe says.
"We're massively grateful for the nurses and doctors at the Children's Hospital at Randwick. They were amazing for our family. The nurses are the most incredible people.
"And so many people in Canberra would just reach out and say Charli was in their prayers. That was special."
The shining light is Charli's smile. It's a reminder of how fragile life is, and how lucky the McCabes are.
"It feels like better days are ahead. Just seeing her on the playground and do normal kid things ... she missed a big chunk of life," McCabe said.
"She suffered a hell of a lot. To see what those chemo blocks can do to a tiny child ... It's amazing how resilient she is. And to see her happy, that's all we could ever want."
