News, Health | Mariell (10) became ill with cancer when she was three months old. Now she paints for income for the hospital clowns.

Åsane Newspaper: Mariell Døssland Herfindal was born on a May day in 2013 at Voss hospital. In September, five days after her baptism, she was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, which is a rare cancer. There are ten such cases in Norway per year.

The tumor began in the adrenal gland with spread to the liver and bone marrow.

– It was naturally a big shock. It was a Friday, and we were sent home from Haukeland hospital. I collapsed in the elevator. Mariell’s father, Even, carried her out into the car, and then he had to help me into the car afterwards, says Mariell’s mother Mette Døssland.

It took a long time to get answers to biopsy samples to find out what type of cancer it was. Fearing that it was high-risk neuroblastoma, the doctors started giving Mariell a high dose of chemotherapy.

– She received two treatments before the answers came, and then the doctors thought it was a neuroblastoma that babies could get and that should disappear by itself, says Døssland.

The family was sent home before Christmas in 2013.

Got a little brother

In June of the following year, she was declared healthy after a blood test and ultrasound, and things went well with the little girl for a long time. In 2016, her little brother was born, and Mariell was three years and four months old.

When her little brother was a month old, Mariell had a relapse. The mother discovered that Mariell had a blue eye.

– It was just above her eye, and her grandfather wondered if she had fallen down the stairs and hit herself. She had fallen down the stairs, but she hadn’t hit herself. This was something else. The bruise just above the eye grew and grew. After much back and forth, we were allowed to come to the hospital and have an X-ray.

It turned out that it was still high-risk neuroblastoma when the cancer returned, this time in the insular cavity and eye bone, as well as the bone marrow.

– Treatment with high-dose chemotherapy for a hundred days, operations and immunotherapy was then underway. Mariell has had over two hundred anesthetics in total over these years. The treatment was initially supposed to take eight months, but it took longer, says Døssland.

In the time that followed, Mariell would have a relapse every year.

– She has had five relapses up to and including 2021, mostly in the bone marrow and in the skull, says the mother.

Picked up by air ambulance

In 2021, the parents hoped that they would finally be able to breathe.

– That year we thought she was completely healthy and took away the medicines that made her so ill. But at Easter that year, after being without medication for two months, she spoke to a friend on the phone, says Mette Døssland.

Mariell says:

– I noticed that I couldn’t say what I wanted to say to her. And then I lost feeling in my left arm and left leg.

The nearly seven-year-old girl was picked up by air ambulance and flown to Haukeland Hospital. There she was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

The mother tells about emergency surgery after a brain tumor in 2021, and a year and a half later: an ear infection that possibly infected the plate in the skull that was inserted during the brain tumor surgery. It had to be removed and Mariell had to receive a lot of antibiotics intravenously.

– She is still on medication, and has not had a relapse since, says Mette Døssland.

There have been many hospital visits for Mariell, who has been to Germany, Oslo and Denmark in connection with various treatments. She hopes to get off the medication soon.

– I want to stop taking medication in the summer. The medicines make me nauseous, and they take away my appetite and I get tired more quickly, explains the 10-year-old.

She plays football in Hovding, but her legs often hurt and she has to take breaks. Especially if it’s cold. Then she will also be allowed to be in during recess at Haukå’s school.

Young artist and actor

The disease does not prevent Mariell from being active. Last week at the latest, she was on stage when the intermediate group in Åsatun Teater had two performances. She likes to paint the most.

– I have liked painting since I went to kindergarten, she says.

– I have painted a lot on the play therapy that they have at the hospital. I make something every day. If I’m not painting, I like to sew, and I’ve made hats for friends and for several of those I go to class with at Haukås. Otherwise I make cardboard or paper figures. For example, of dorollers, she says and smiles.

– I like painting hospital clowns best, says Mariell.

– The hospital clowns at Haukeland have been absolutely fantastic, says the mother.

– They sing the birthday song for me. And if I freak out about various examinations and injections that they have to do in the hospital, and don’t feel like it, the hospital clowns come and make me do it anyway. Once they came to my house in clown costumes and made balloon figures, says the girl, who turns eleven in May.

On this day, Mariell is visited by one of the hospital clowns. Trude-Litt Masse Mer knows Mariell’s story well, and has met her several times. In the sunshine outside the home in Hordvik, she lifts the mood in no time, and blows huge soap bubbles in the courtyard.

Mariell’s dreams

Mariell has sold bracelets for several years. She is the one who came up with the phrase on the bracelets: Everything is possible when we do it together. She does this in collaboration with the Askil fund, which was set up by a father who lost his son, Akil, shortly after birth.

The proceeds give the soon-to-be eleven-year-old girl to the Askil fund and to the hospital clowns. And she has also given part of the money she has collected after selling bracelets to the children’s cancer association, which the mother says has been a very good support for the family all these years.

So far, Mariell has received over twenty thousand kroner. Recently, she built her own kiosk with a little help from her father, where she sold wristbands and offered free buns if you bought a wristband.

– I want to give my paintings to the hospital, so they can hang them on the wall there, she says.

– But we have made prints of the paintings and they are for sale to generate income for the hospital clowns, says Mette.

When she tells this story together with Mariell, it is both to tell about the efforts of the hospital clowns and to focus on the importance of research.

– Research is extremely important. Obviously we see this through what we have been through. The diagnosis that Mariell received was initially irreversible. But research and new medicines have made it possible to cure the disease.

– What do you dream about, Mariell?

– I want to work in play therapy at the hospital. Or maybe become an actor. Or an artist. Or maybe I can become a hospital clown. They are very nice. They lift my spirits, says the girl who turns 11 on 14 May.