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OVER €111,000 has been raised online to help send a Cork teenager to the US for brain tumour surgery.
17-year-old Aaron McMahon was diagnosed with a chordoma brain tumour in February 2017 and has since been told by Irish doctors that his condition is terminal. He needs urgent surgery on his brain in order to survive.
Speaking to The Neil Prendeville Show on Cork’s RedFM, Aaron and his parents Gail and Paul explained that the treatment in Ireland isn’t sufficient and the application process for surgery is taking too long.
However, they have made contact with the Chordoma Foundation in the US who have found a surgeon in a hospital in Pittsburgh that can perform the needed surgery in June.
In order to book in for the surgery, a deposit has to be paid to the hospital by 30 April. However, as the fee was over €100,000, the family couldn’t afford it.
Last week, the McMahon family made the decision to launch a GoFundMe page online to raise the necessary funds for the deposit.
“I was fed up doing nothing, watching everything go by, knowing time was essential for me. I was stressed and I was just sick of everyone asking me how I was and putting on a fake smile for everyone,” Aaron said.
Aaron’s father Paul explained how difficult it has been facing dozens of roadblocks in relation to his treatment over the past year and a half.
“I’ve had moments in the car where I have pulled over on the side of the road and said why me? The kind of person I am is if we have a problem, we get a solution and we try to get options. We had no options,” his father said.
Fundraiser success
Launched just six days ago, the fundraiser had reached just over €67,000 when the family spoke to RedFM this morning. It has now raised over €111,000. The family will be able to place a deposit on the surgery fee.
Speaking of the amount of money raised so far, his father said: “I’m elated, relieved, I’ve cried. I’m a dad, I’m a proud Irish man and he’s my boy. We’ve gone through this situation since February last year when he was diagnosed with a tumour.”
Echoing the words of his father, Aaron said that the reaction to his fundraiser has been “overwhelming”.
There’s a lot of weight off my shoulders. It’s overwhelming. I didn’t expect anyone to really get involved. I just put the story out there thinking no one would react.
Aaron is currently undergoing pre-operative treatment in Cork, with the guidance of his neurosurgeon in the US. The funds raised will be used to cover the costs of his operation and post-op care, along with travel costs for both Aaron and his family.
“The people of this country have given us this chance. The good news is we can sign a contract and send the money over to the hospital in Pittsburgh and get the operation done at the end of June,” Aaron’s father Paul said.
Aaron McMahon’s GoFundMe page can be found here.
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also , I don’t think it should be called ” bettering ” their exams results , it’s questioning their results to make sure they were graded properly .
Suzie, of course people are appealing to better their result. If they thought that the examiner had been generous to them do you really think they’d appeal in order for the exam to be “graded properly”?
sloop ,yes to better their result because the students believe they did better than the results they were given so therefore appeal , but if it had been graded properly in the first place then they wouldn’t have to appeal .
But its not called bettering?
Agreed Suzie, but, not wishing to sound pedantic, the article is about the results of the appeals not why the students had to appeal. Having said that, the fact that there were so many appeals raises serious questions which need to be answered
so nearly a fifth of results appealed were wrong? that’s quite startling
Over 25% of Biology was upgraded. What a poor marking performance. And let’s not forget those marking Biology were the ones teaching it too…. scary.
25% of appealed results were upgraded, appealed results are not an accurate sample of exam papers, it is in fact a very small percentage of total papers.
25% of Biology was upgraded ? – where are you getting that figure from ? 245 out of 25,596 is not 25%……..
Now if you said 25% of those appealed, that would be different………..
well they don’t generally upgrade non appealed papers now do they. Think about it for a while…. 25% of all appealed Biology papers were upgraded. They are a representation of both the standard of marking a teaching.
I understand that S ReiIIy, but I think some thought should be put into reviewing a broader sample of appealed and unappealed papers to investigate what the actual % is, given that the percentage of appealed is so high.
How can so many results be wrong? Will the teacher that gave these wrong results be marking next year?
Course they will. You can’t punish anyone in this country
Except non public or state and semi state workers. we’re fair game.
2000 wrong out of almost 390,000 is a pretty good result. Don’t forget that for many exams what is right and what is wrong can be a matter of opinion.
1,822 upgraded yet only 3 downgraded, I somehow find it hard to believe that so many were marked mistakenly in one direction only.
There’s always going to be more upgrades as you would generally only appeal a result if you think you should have been marked higher after viewing the script yourself, and often with a teacher. If you thought you were lucky to get what you got surely you’d leave well enough alone and not appeal it?
I never knew there was an exam on One Direction Pat? If there was I’m sure a lot of teenagers scored well on it !!!
Lot of good it does for students who may have missed out on a college place due to erroneously marked papers when the term started 6 weeks ago for most colleges. Shocking number of papers marked incorrectly too it seems.
Is 1 in 200 really “shocking”? Bear in mind that many papers have a lot of wiggle room for answers to be “right” or “wrong”. Take Economics for example, one I got checked. For one question on the advantages of Foreign Direct Investment one could say:
Increases Employment
Increases State Revenue through Taxtion
Decreases Social Welfare Spend
Increases Consumer Spending
Decreases State Healthcare costs.
You could get anywhere between 5 and 30 on that answer, depending on the corrector and marking scheme. Some will come along and consider them all separate valid points, another could say that they are all spins on the same answer.
@David Hanlon. I agree that the results have come out too late. However, if you look you will see that the highest number of exams that were marked wrongly apply to Ag Science and that was 1.8%. The total on average is 0.47%. That means that 99.53% of all papers were deemed to have been marked correctly. These figures refer to the overall number of exams corrected and not to the appeals.
6 weeks is far too long to have to wait for the appeal results.
All college places have to be postponed till next year now.
It’s very important for students waiting for appeals to accept a relevant course this year so that it might count for the original course they wanted eg taking science while your hoping for medicine
Them percentages are all wrong
Did my leaving this year and failed business was shocked when I seen this so decided to view my papers , when I seen I got 38% I walked out of the room, it was the most frustrating thing ever since I did 9 months of grinds for 6th year luckily enough I got a course I’m enjoying but 2% off a pass is horrible to see
what about the junior cert appeals when can we get the statistics on those?!
have your say