Family face
Each year Very Special Kids chooses a 'Family Face' of the Appeal to represent the more than 800 families we support throughout Victoria.
Meet the McMahon family, Michael, Liz, Angus (14), Hugh (12), Max (10) and Lucy (7), the ‘Family Face’ of the 2012 Very Special Kids Piggy Bank Appeal.
Imagine your first child went from being able to run and walk to being confined to a wheel chair and there’s nothing you can do to stop it happening…how would you feel? ….Meet the McMahon family, Michael, Liz, Angus (14), Hugh (12), Max (10) and Lucy (7) the ‘Family Face’ of the 2012 Very Special Kids Piggy Bank Appeal.
Michael and Liz McMahon are both nurses who worked together at the Royal Children’s Hospital neurology ward where they met and fell in love. Life was good; they were thrilled when their first son Angus was born because it was the start of fulfilling their dreams to have a large family.
On 16 August, 2002 Angus was diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a progressive muscle wasting disease that only affects males. Liz recalls that they felt a mixture of horror and shock when they received the diagnosis. For Michael the hardest fact to face was knowing the impact it would have on Angus’s daily life. “The nature of the disease is that it takes away his muscle cells one by one. Eventually he can’t walk or do all the things we all take for granted.” Click here to read the full story
Click here to view the McMahon Family Story
Click here to view the 2012 Piggy Bank Appeal television commercial
