Evalyn’s Journey

My daughter’s name is Evalyn, she is 14 years old and loves to dance and bake.

Over the years Evalyn has raised money for McMillan with bake sales, made homemade gifts, offered her time and written letters to people in need of companionship.

In 2018 Evalyn lost a school friend to an aggressive form of brain tumour (DIPG) and her grandpa to a long-term battle with cancer, within a few months of each other. Her mum also had an emergency hysterectomy 2 months later. The family then found out that a family friend’s son had been given only a few months to live after a 6-year battle with a brain tumour. It was a hard year of sad news and reality of how cruel life can be.

Only time can make the pain a bit easier to live with. Things seemed to be getting back to some form of normality, when Evalyn then started Secondary school and shortly after, the dreaded Covid was the next blow.

The combination of the pressures of Secondary school and Covid-19 basically robbed Evalyn of her kind, bubbly and genuinely compassionate character. Also, her sense of kindness and trust of the world had been shattered.

In 2020, Evalyn began to no longer want to see people, go out for walks with her dog and distanced herself from all of her friends. She shut herself away in her room and began to feel anxious, had low mood and begin to display OCD type behaviours.

She would spend all day in her room and be of such low mood that she would get agitated and upset and would start to headbutt the bed frame, or scratch at herself and this would then result in her becoming so distressed that she would attempt to jump out the window or tie her dressing gown belt around her neck.

Evalyn was referred to CAMHS in April 2020 and in June 2020 had her first appointment with a Clinical Psychiatric Nurse - she has been seeing CAMHS every week ever since. Evalyn has tried many different therapies over the years, along with community-based support within the home and within school. She has made no positive progress and unfortunately has become more poorly since this time.

Evalyn is now on a high dose of an anti-psychotic drug due to hearing voices and seeing things and is also prescribed an anti-depressant for her low mood. She self-harms daily, to her arms, neck, legs and chest and will not talk or open up to anyone.

In February 2022 Evalyn refused meals and stopped eating completely by March. This was believed to be a form of self-harm and after losing nearly 23kg and still not being able to access the help offered to her, it was decided she was too poorly and a bed on an adolescent mental health unit would need to be sought.

Evalyn was admitted to a mental health unit in Bristol, on the 11th of August 2022.

This brings me to creating this plea for help. As a proud father trying to provide for my family, I find myself having to face another challenge.

Evalyn’s little sister, mum and myself live around 100 miles from where Evalyn has been admitted. The upshot of this is having to travel to and from Bristol for meetings and visits on a regular basis. Currently, Evalyn is admitted for up to 8 weeks initially and to ease the financial burdens of the travelling and expenditure, I ask for help to raise around £1,500.