Rebecca, 11, has spent much of her childhood in a hospital

Rebecca Pallone, 11, is like most little girls. She loves dancing, riding her bike and playing soccer. But unlike the others, Rebecca has lived a lot of her life in hospitals.

Rebecca was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis before she was born, and has been to hospital at least once a year for as long as she can remember. During each visit, the primary school student spends two weeks at a time on an intensive antibiotic treatment, with both IV and oral antibiotics.

Rebecca’s condition worsened when she contracted a stubborn germ last August, resulting in a hospital stay of 24 days. Due to her Cystic Fibrosis, Rebecca is unable to mingle with other children while in hospital, and visitors are unable to enter her room in case they pick up germs and pass them on to other CF sufferers.

Rebecca’s mum, Trudi, says her daughter has learned to live with her situation, and at times even tries to make it fun. But like one million other kids who are admitted to hospital in Australia every year, Rebecca has plenty of other places she would rather be, and often finds herself homesick - wishing she was anywhere but there, hooked up to an IV drip.

“Our whole cystic fibrosis journey is a positive journey,” Trudi told 9Honey.

“We try to not look at the negative, we always try to look at the positive.

“But when she stops and thinks about it, she gets really down.”

While in treatment Trudi tries to keep her daughter’s life as normal as possible, encouraging her to play boardgames and do craft. But she realises her daughter is often frustrated at the thought of missing normal things, including the simple things such as school concert rehearsals.

Trudi says that Rebecca often gets upset during her hospital stints, missing her dad, brother, sister and cat. Rebecca’s brother Jacob, 19, also suffers CF so they’re often kept apart to prevent the spread of dangerous germs passing between them.

Trudi says one of the only things that truly brightens Rebecca’s stay is when her friends come to visit her.

“One of her friend’s mums said, ‘It was so beautiful, she was so excited when we arrived’,” Trudi explained.

“She loves it when her friends come to visit because she really misses them.

“When they come in, it makes hospital, not like hospital.”

For those children in hospital 50 per cent are reported to suffer from moderate to high levels of homesickness.

Now, a new initiative by the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation is taking aim at raising money to ensure the very best equipment, research and services are available to get kids back home, sooner.

“We developed the idea because our Foundation was exploring how we could make more of a difference to the emotional wellbeing of sick kids,” Nicole Stokes, CEO of the Foundation, said.

“When I shared our idea with colleagues at other hospital foundations across Australia, they wanted to be involved and they immediately offered to collaborate with us to deliver national impact for every child and every community.”

The campaign, which launches today – July 3 – will raise money with Coles and Disney to help bring children, including Rebecca, back to their families and friends sooner and avoid any damage to their mental health while in treatment.

For every jar of Coles’ ‘Mum’s Sause’ 50 cents will be donated to the charity, along with 100 per cents of proceeds from Disney’s special screenings of Marvel Studios’ The Avengers Endgame and Infinity War on August 3.

“Anything to help the kids feel like they are not different from other kids is going to help them,” Trudi says.