Skip to content

Meet Mira, Richmond's 'Miracle Girl'

Told to arrange their daughter’s funeral before her first birthday, Mira’s parents are now preparing her for Kindergarten

Mira wasn’t even one-year-old and had developed a tumour in her head the size of a tennis ball.

Now, aged five, she’s enrolled in kindergarten this fall. 

“She’s a girly girl. All she wants to do is sing and dance and she’s very social and loves to draw and play with girlfriends. She’s a typical five-year-old,” said Ragne Reid of her daughter.

This is a story that serves to remind people to never give up.

Born in June 2009, Mira was just eight-months-old when she came down with flu-like symptoms and couldn’t stay upright while on vacation.

“She was listless and vomiting,” said her mom.

She, and Mira’s father, Matt Reid, took their daughter to the emergency room on the Sunshine Coast, but were sent home under the advice Mira had the flu.

The family immediately went home to Richmond and, after visiting their family doctor the next day, they soon found themselves at B.C. Children’s Hospital.

“You know something’s not right with your child when you go straight in,” said Ragne.

“We saw the MRI. It was just absolutely mind-boggling. She had four tumours on her brain and one on her spine.”

After a couple months the prognosis was grim; she had  medulloblastoma and Ragne and Matt were told to make arrangements for Mira’s eventual death, while simultaneously planning the birth of their soon-to-be-born son, Jax.

“I was just thinking, this is not going to be how it ends,” said Ragne, adding she had begun looking at care alternatives in the U.S.

But then a call came from the hospital; a neurosurgeon, willing to try an incredibly invasive surgery, followed by such a high dose of chemotherapy that it would render Mira incapable of eating for a year.

Physicians (too many for Ragne to count) worked around the clock on Mira’s brain. She lost her entire body’s worth of blood, five times over.

But the plan worked; Mira’s one tough cookie.

“(Health practitioners) have never seen an outcome with a patient with such a positive cancer diagnosis,” noted Ragne, who still can’t believe her infant child was initially sent home, considering the condition she was in.

“I was blown away we could be dealing with doctors in an ER that could be so dramatically wrong.”

But she applauds the efforts of the staff at Children’s Hospital.

“You’re not getting better care than that and more cutting edge physicians,” she said.

And now, there’s a newfound appreciation for the hospital.

“I don’t know if I understood it before,” she said.

The family volunteered their story with the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation to help shed light on an important upcoming fundraiser supported by Dairy Queen.

On Thursday, Aug. 14, proceeds from the sale of Blizzards on Miracle Treat Day will go to the hospital.

 

@WestcoastWood

gwood@richmond-news.com