WATCH: Zoe’s music video set to Katy Perry’s Roar.
VANCOUVER – Ten-year-old Zoe Palfy’s biggest wish was to star in her own music video.
Having been diagnosed with leukemia a few years ago, Zoe has been in hospital undergoing treatment for months.
“They said that Zoe initially had about a 10 per cent chance of survival and it’s really good that we got her in before she actually got sick,” says her mom Jody. “Usually they find the cancer when the kid has some sort of secondary infection, that’s how they find out that’s what they have but she didn’t have one so that was great.”
“But just the same they said she would of probably only had a few weeks to live if we hadn’t noticed.”
Zoe went into hospital for four rounds of intense chemotherapy and then underwent a stem cell transplant to give her a better chance of survival. Between chemotherapy rounds the family could get a few hours outside the hospital but only if Zoe had enough white blood cells.
“Zoe was amazing,” says her mom Jody. “She was such a trooper the whole way through treatment, she just dug down and got braver and braver every time she had to do something, no matter how scared she got she would just dig deeper.”
So when it came to Make a Wish BC granting Zoe a wish, she knew what she wanted to do.
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Her mom says she was over the moon. “It’s really neat to have something to look forward to and to daydream about and we spent hours talking about what it might look like or what we might do and she would draw pictures of it, and it became like a real tool to get through some tough times,” says Jody.
Set to Katy Perry’s popular song Roar, Zoe also journeys through the jungle but eventually makes it to a limo and a throng of paparazzi wanting her autograph and picture.
Twenty-five people volunteered their time to make the video happen – from production crew, stagers, dancers and IT support, along with 50 volunteers to be paparazzi and film forest scenes. There were also more than 200 hours of rehearsals required along with filming and editing. Donations of $20,000 made this project possible.
“Really just an amazing gift, just the whole way through,” says Jody.
– With files from Shaw Cable
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