The beginning
Five-year-old Mia Bennett went to her school disco in Gulgong on a Thursday and danced with her friends, on Saturday, she went to the Gulgong Show and by Monday she was being flown to Dubbo Hospital for treatment and later to Sydney.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
She still hasn't returned home.
Mia's mother, Stacey Bennett said she pleaded with doctors to do a head scan when Mia started complaining of head and neck pain after weeks of unsuccessful treatments for what they thought might have been a vomiting bug.
"About four paediatricians came into check her speech and balance, but said they didn't want to do a scan because they don't like putting children that age through the procedure unnecessarily," Stacey said.
"I pretty much said I'm not leaving here until we scan her head, it's the last thing we haven't checked, they went away for about three hours before coming back,"
"We finally got the CT scan done at about 10pm - this is still in Dubbo - and Mia was great, she stayed still and went through the whole thing with no complaints."
A doctor walked into the room, pulled Stacey aside and told her he had some bad news.
Almost almost an hour later, while waiting for the results, Stacey turned to her mother and said 'something isn't right.' A doctor walked into the room, pulled Stacey aside and told her he had some bad news.
"The doctor came in and pulled me into the room and said 'I'm really sorry, but Mia has got a nearly five centimetre tumour and she's got lots of fluid in her head and we need to get you to Sydney.'"
Mia, her mother Stacey and her father Robert O’Dwyer landed in Sydney at about 5am the next morning.
At 11.30 that same morning Mia went into surgery to have the tumour removed. This was on February 19, nearly three weeks later, Mia and her family are still at Westmead Hospital.
Stacey says they doctors have said the tumour could be a 3 or 4 type tumour which she says means there is a chance it could be curable, but the family isn't out of the woods yet.
"She's got to have a spinal tap tomorrow (Friday, March 8) because this kind of tumour can spread into her spine. We're praying that it's not in there, so that takes a few days for the results to come back," she said.
A community rallies
While Mia and her parents go through turmoil at hospital, the Gulgong and Mudgee communities wasted no time in rallying behind the family.
Stacey says that they've been overwhelmed with all the love and support they've received since Mia's admission.
"We are very well-known in Gulgong I've lived there my whole life and we know basically everybody. When we first went to the doctors my mother was working for Mia's father at Odie's Bistro in Gulgong at the Post Office Hotel and my mum went over and spoke to Mia's dad and said 'Stacey thinks Mia might have a brain tumour.'" Stacey recalled.
From there staff from Odie's and two of Stacey's friends, Nicole and Emma who started a GoFundMe page. But it didn't stop there.
"All these beautiful, amazing people have started other stuff as well," she said.
"I'm thrown back [at the support] it makes me get through it every single day. It's not even about the fundraising but it's the messages that we get from everybody asking and genuinely caring about how Mia and my family are coping with it,"
"Mia will pull through this and to know that she is going to have that support from everybody is amazing."
- Stacey Bennett
"It's amazing that people even take the time to ask and want to know how she's going and I don't even have words for it,"
"Mia will pull through this and to know that she is going to have that support from everybody is amazing."
What the future holds
The family hasn't returned back home since they were flown to Dubbo in February and Stacey hopes that - with Mia's birthday coming up - that they can get home soon.
"We are hoping that after she has her spinal tap done, maybe tomorrow, (Friday, March 8) that they will maybe let us go home, I pray, for a couple of days but everything changes so quickly down here, so I just, yeah, I don't know it's all up and down."
"We've quite often, Robert and I, laid in bed with Mia and read the messages and showed her the videos and explained what people are doing for her."
On March 25, Mia starts her first round of 30 radiation treatments - which is the day before her birthday.
Stacey says Mia hasn't let a single thing faze her.
"She's always been quite independent, if she can't do something, she keeps trying until she can do it herself, she can do this," she said.