Tipp woman to climb Carrantouhill three times in 24 hours to help family of stricken child

A Roscrea woman is taking on a huge physical challenge next month, as she attempts to climb Ireland’s highest mountain not once, but three times in 24 hours in order to raise much-needed funds for a family in need.

Avid mountain climber Nikita Conlon is travelling down to Kerry to take on this mammoth task over the course of October 6th and 7th to raise money for six-year-old Noah Quish from Monaleen whose family are currently trying to give the young boy badly needed treatment which will require trips abroad.

Noah was born with serious health ranging from a heart defect, severe laryngomalacia, severe sleep apnoea, scoliosis, chromosome deletion, and a Chiari malformation that affects balance.

Noah was born in March 2017 weighing 7lbs 3oz, with a poor suck and struggling in his during the first few weeks, the stricken boy had open heart surgery at four months old, and more recently back in August he had his third brain surgery in what has been a tough few years for his parents.

As such, Nikita came to know about the child’s plight through her work at the Milford Care Centre in Castletroy where she worked with Noah’s mother, and she felt she could help the family who are in need of financial support as Noah needs to travel to Texas in the United States for further treatment in the coming months, which will be funded completely at the family’s expense.

“He’s had a lot of struggles recently,” Ms Conlon said.

“He is due to get spinal surgery in the next few months and then he has to go over to Texas, so the reason I’m trying to raise the money is to help the family financially because the cost coming down the line in the next while is going to be hard on them. So the more I raise the better."

The recent brain surgery in particular has been very challenging physically for the young Limerick boy, as he developed difficulties and resulted in a number of complications including severe hydrocephalus, which meant he had to have a shunt inserted to help drain excess fluid, and more seriously, hee developed meningitis after the surgery and now has a long road to recovery.

The trip to Texas in the coming months will see Noah undergo three weeks of intense speech therapy to try and alleviate his issues stemming from the laryngomalacia, which means Noah is non-verbal and has issues swallowing.
He will also receive treatment to help improve his feeding peg, which is in place in his stomach to help feed the youngster, and this undertaking from his devoted parents means that funds will be crucial to get Noah the help he so badly requires.

“It is an awful lot for the family.

“His parents have had to stop work on and off constantly over the years because it’s an awful lot of work to care for him and they have an 11-year-old daughter at home to take care of too,“ ”she highlighted.

Ms Conlon is an accomplished climber and most recently climbed Mount Kilimanjaro last February to raise funds for the Dean Maxwell Nursing Home in Roscrea and she is hard at training ahead of the attempted marathon climb.

“The reason I’m doing it three times is that I’ve already done it once, so I might as well challenge myself and see if anyone else would like to take part. I’ve literally been climbing mountains every weekend so far. I’ve also been doing a lot of running and I’m in the gym four times a week at the moment so I’m up to that level of fitness at this stage,” she finished.

The fundraiser is been run through a GoFundMe page and donations can be made through the following link or by clicking here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/climbing-carrountohil-3-times-in-one-day-for-noah