A Perfect Match

How wonderful for Killaloe village resident Delmer Hartwig, an unmarried man in his mid-50s who won a $15-million Ontario lottery and is now a multimillionaire. One day a hard working man with simple tastes, the next a man whose fortunes had suddenly changed so he could hand in his notice to the logging company he worked for, no longer needing to operate a gravel truck. The 700 residents of the village are thrilled for the man, he is well liked.

"He's always got a smile on his face. He's known for his contagious laugh. You know when you talk to people and you hear good news for somebody that's so deserving of it? Well, this is the case. He's just a really nice man", said Janice Visneskie, mayor of Killaloe for the past 24 years and whose brother operates the logging company that the village's new celebrity has long worked for.

Everyone should be so fortunate. Few are. And then there are those on the other side of Fortune's coin. Those whom tragedy strikes and there are no solutions to their dilemma. For whom no amount of money could possibly make a difference to the outcome of their personal misery. On the other hand, some amount of money might be helpful to alleviate the pain.

It would help Lesley and Mark Taylor to cope a little easier. Their daughter, India Buxton Taylor is a different kind of celebrity. One known for suffering from the rarest of rare orphan conditions so untreatable that she has been given a very short time to live. The 16-year-old girl suffers from a neurodegenerative lipid disorder caused by a defective gene which functions in reverse.

She is incapable as a result of having her body process fats necessary for activity, to energize her body.

India Buxton Taylor, is suffering from a one-of-a-kind neurodegenerative disease that unless treated will likely kill her within a year. Parents are Mark and Lesley Taylor.

 She first began suffering strange symptoms which doctors were unable to diagnose. It took six full years to identify the source of the little girls' illness. And India, now 16, is likely to die within two years, her parents were informed. The disorder she suffers from kills the neurons of her central nervous system. Her body is assailed with hundreds, thousands of seizures each and every day. 

 

Friends of her family are trying to raise funds to help India's parents cope with her needs.

They   are no longer able to work. They stay with their daughter every minute of every day, with scant relief. If their concerns over having enough money to live with her as they must, giving her comfort and their company, allowing nothing to distract them from their child's need, it would be immensely helpful to the family. A benefit concert has been planned to take place tomorrow at Le Hibou cafe and bar in Wakefield, Quebec.

Although there are no solutions to India's dread condition, her parents hope that by encouraging research something may be discovered that will be of help to others in the future suffering as their daughter is now. In September they launched a fund-raising campaign for research at the University of Ottawa's neural regeneration laboratory. To find a treatment for illnesses like India's.

 

www.ottawacitizen.com 

by Laura Armstrong

Imagine, if that most fortunate Killaloe resident in a spirit of generosity and humanity delivered to that fund and to India's parents a portion of what he has won, how useful a gesture that would represent....