The 18-year-old graduate of Emmaus College in Logan has cerebral palsy, but last night walked in high heels after undergoing over 40 operations and several years of treatment at Queensland Children’s Hospital.
From wheels to heels for school formal
Mackenziee step closer to formal dream
How Class of 2020 survived hellish year
In February, before COVID-19 started to take its devastating toll on the state, the vibrant teenager told The Courier-Mail her dream was to walk in heels for her formal.But her mother Raelene said the pandemic had come at the right time. “COVID actually came at the perfect time – for Mackie as much as we still would have got the formal she would have still been in a heck of a lot of pain,” she said. “She’s had another knee surgery in among all this … in 12 months she’s had three knee surgeries.” But Mackenziee was determined to wear her “Dorothy vibe” red heels, and convinced her friends and school she was wearing a different colour.
“I actually wasn’t expecting to pick out a black dress, I was going in for a pink one, but I came out with a black one,” she said. “Nobody knew the colour of my dress – I convinced them for the past 10 months it was pink. “I’m very excited to be finishing school.” A key to her success was her lifelong building of a relationship with Queensland Children’s Hospital physiotherapist Dr Tim McGowan. “Tim’s been with her her whole life – that usually doesn’t happen,” Raelene said. Mackenziee will start a Bachelor of Communication and Journalism at University of Southern Queensland in March.
The number of Australian children with cerebral palsy, the most common physical disability in the world, is on the decline.
One in 700 children is born with cerebral palsy today compared to 1 in 500 a decade ago, a drop of almost 30 per cent.
Cerebral Palsy Alliance chair Professor Nadia Badawi has told Sky News that doctors have seen survivability ‘go up’ and disability ‘go down’ due to quality healthcare and novel risk mitigation strategies.
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