Genie and Frances

As many of you know, Genie's little sister, Frances, was diagnosed with B Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia last year.

In July, she will be getting an allogenic stem cell transplant and will be in hospital for 6 weeks minimum. Genie has been working as many nights as possible to save up as much leave as she can so she can be there to support Frances and their family.

All the money we can collect will go to Genie and her family to support them however they need.

Genie shared some information about her family:

I thought I would share a bit about me and my family.

This is what home in NZ looks like for me. My family is of Tongan German descent, and we are considered 'blended'. There are 4 boys, 5 girls, my dad and step mum.

As you can imagine life is never boring at home and with me being the oldest, I have lots of little mini me's to help around the house.

I moved to Australia in August 2024 in pursuit of more career progression, education, to be with my longtime partner and to financially help my siblings in NZ.

Since moving to Australia, my sister Frances(16) in November 2024 was diagnosed with B Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia. The night Frances was rushed to hospital; I was rostered on a night shift. I remember during 9pm handover I got multiple missed calls from my dad in NZ. I kept declining the calls, but the nurse in charge kindly said I could step outside and accept the phone call. It a all happened very quickly. Due to her high blast count, Frances was started on Chemo first thing the next morning. Since then, Frances has relapsed and on a chemo regime under the Children's Oncology group with a trial of blinatumomab and is being worked up for a stem cell transplant. We have discovered that my 2 brothers and I are half matches for Frances and there is a potential full match donor in America. The allogenic transplants are very taxing, with patients in NZ often being hospitalised for up to 6 weeks.

Although I don't have favourite siblings, Frances is very special to me. It will be 11 years this Sunday since Frances, and I lost our mum to breast cancer and since then she has become somewhat like my own daughter. With all the younger kids at home, she came and lived with me in 2018, and I have been her primary carer and legal guardian since moving to Australia. Frances doesn't have her mum to be there for her through all this, but she knows she can always count on her big sister.