Help us in the fight against Meilani’s cancer

In total, my daughter has been in the hospital for about a month now. When my daughter originally went in the hospital, it was for orbital cellulitis. What was an eye infection turned into our worst nightmare.

On December 2nd, my 5 month old baby was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. After multiple lab draws, 2 blood transfusions and a mostly unsuccessful bone marrow procedure they were finally able to find the source of the problem. When the doctors tried to do the bone marrow biopsy and aspiration, the bone they pulled was white and she has next to no aspirate on either hip. Her leukemia is flooding her bone marrow preventing her from making new, healthy cells. Which explains her neutropenia, inability to make new RBC’s, persistent sickness for 3 weeks, etc.

She has to go through 6 months of aggressive chemo treatment - if she needs a bone marrow transplant it will be months of chemo and then the transplant. Her chemo will last around 2-3 hours a day and my baby will be in the hospital pretty much everyday as she has no immune system to fight off infections. My baby girl is going to have her first Christmas, first birthday in the cancer center :(. I can’t even begin to describe what I’ve been feeling since my daughters diagnosis. I’m very grateful they found out, but this feels like a death sentence. They have to do an ultrasound to check for the best spot to pull out the aspirate to check the genetics of the chemo cells, finally giving us a “stage” aka low/high risk factors. If she’s low risk, she only needs 6-8 months of chemotherapy and survival odds are 50-70%. If she’s high risk and needs a transplant , only doing chemo and NOT getting a transplant her odds of survival are 30-50%, with the transplant 85%. I’m so scared, and I want to be there for her as much as possible. To me, those numbers feel so low. I want to see 100% survival odds and anything less than that makes me so terrified she won’t make it.

The doctors told me during the chemo I have to be there with her. Because I have to be there during treatment, I have to take a leave of absence from work. This leave of absence is going to put my severely behind on bills and will get me evicted as I won’t have the finances to pay my rent.

I’m a single mom and I have a 7 year old son that is really confused and upset about this entire situation. As far as he knows, she is very sick and won’t be home for a long time. It’s incredibly difficult having to choose which child to be with, because at the end of the day one looses out.

I am reaching out in hopes that I can get some financial assistance, without it I don’t know how I will provide housing for myself and my kids, pay for my car, etc while my baby is in the hospital. If you can’t help financially, all I ask is that you please pray for my baby. Please pray that she’s going to beat this cancer and will live to have a wonderful and fulfilling life. Also, for everyone that goes to church, please put my daughter, Meilani on the prayer chain. Thank you to everybody that has taken the time to read this, has said a prayer for my daughter and helped in any way they can. It means the absolute world to me.

I also have cash app! My cash app is $Vanessssalynn

Thank you —Vanessa