When 6-year-old Kimberly started complaining of sore legs, mum Anne-Marie McMillan put it down to typical childhood growing pains.
But when the aching continued and eventually spread to her arms, she took her to Rotorua Hospital, never suspecting the family's world was about to be shattered.
Blood
tests revealed Kimberly had leukaemia, a form of cancer which affects about 150 New Zealand children and young people each year.
Two days later she was undergoing more tests at Auckland's Starship Hospital and the next she was having her first dose of chemotherapy - a cancer treatment regime which would last more than two years.
Kimberly, now 10 and a bubbly Year 6 pupil at Glenholme School, is happily in remission and shows no signs of the disease which threatened her life - something Anne-Marie is more than grateful for. "She stopped her medication last April and that was a nerve-wracking time because you knew that when she was on it, the cancer wasn't there," she said.
"Even now you know there's always a chance it could come back at any time but she's doing well and gets treated like everyone else."
As someone who has benefited from the Child Cancer Foundation, Kimberly has donated paintings to The Professionals, which runs the Child Cancer Foundation Charity Breakfast and Art Auction every year in Rotorua.
On Thursday, during Child Cancer Appeal Week, another one of her paintings will go under the hammer and Kimberly hopes it was raise more than $700 - topping what the Royal Lakeside Novotel paid for her art work at last year's auction. The event raised more than $13,000 and it's hoped this week's auction will raise even more.
*Child Cancer Appeal Week ends on Sunday.
