SHE WAS ONLY 3 WEEKS OLD WHEN HER MOM KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG

Little Lelothando Mia Maarman should be six months into the ordinary work of being a baby: reaching for toys, finding new sounds, keeping her mother awake because she is teething.

Instead, much of her short life has been measured in clinic queues, hospital corridors, tests, and treatment.

It began when she was three weeks old. Her mother, Jessica, saw what looked like pimples spreading across her tiny body. At a local clinic in the Westlake area of Cape Town, staff called it a skin infection and sent them home with cream and antibiotics.

It did not get better. It got worse.

Jessica kept looking for an answer. At Retreat Day Hospital, she was told it might be a blood infection. The doubt in her chest did not go away. On 28 May, when Lelothando was three months old, Jessica took her daughter to Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital herself.

A week of tests followed. Doctors asked to sample her skin and perform a bone marrow procedure. Jessica said yes. She only wanted a name for what was happening to her baby.

Then came the sentence that split their life in two:

“Mommy, your baby has LCH.”

Langerhans cell histiocytosis is a rare disorder in which abnormal immune cells can build up in different parts of the body. Jessica cried for hours. Her daughter was only a few months old.

They still had to fight.

Lelothando now receives vinblastine treatment at Red Cross every Thursday. Because her veins are so small, doctors have struggled to access them; she also needs a port so the treatment can continue. Through all of it, Jessica calls her a fighter.

Behind that fighter is a mother who has already given up the rest of her working life. Jessica left her job with the City of Cape Town to care for her daughter full-time. Her partner is struggling too. Lelothando is his first child. Watching her go through this has been almost more than he can hold.

The hospital calendar now runs the household. Jessica’s salary stopped. The bills did not. There are still nappies, groceries, toiletries, taxi fare to Rondebosch, rent, and a six-month-old who needs her mother in the chair beside the drip.

The Kids-Can Cancer Foundation has appealed for help so Jessica can stay in that chair: nappies, food, transport, nutritional support, the unglamorous costs that decide whether a parent can keep showing up.

Lelothando is only six months old. She has already shown how much fight can fit inside a small body. Her mother has shown something just as stark: she never stopped asking what was wrong.

Now they are asking not to walk the rest of the road alone.

One Thursday. One treatment. One small victory at a time.

Source: Family account of Jessica Maarman and an appeal published by the Kids-Can Cancer Foundation, Cape Town.