Keep Daya positive with her fight against Cancer

Hi all, my name is Isla and I am fundraising for my beautiful little sister Daya, who is currently battling a rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma cancer.

To give you some background, back in September 2021 Daya had to what we believed at the time tonsillitis several times, we were back and forth with doctors and even a night in A&E but everytime antibiotics were prescribed and was just kind of left as it being that, however my mum felt that something wasn’t right and kept pushing for Daya to be referred to a specialist, which we have now been told without my mums intuition and constant pushing and pleading with doctors we could of been in a far worse situation. In early January we had an appointment with the doctor who decided to take out her tonsils and they would do a biopsy as something seemed off about them. A month went by and had no results from the biopsy so life carried on as usual, Daya was her normal funny and happy self, as a family life was great as i had booked to move to Australia the following month and dayas 7th birthday was coming up. However on the 11th of February our lives came to a hold as the doctors had said the biopsy had flagged for a high risk of lymphoma cancer, as a family we were broken but tried to stay as positive as possible as there were still more tests to have before it was confirmed. The following Friday a week before Daya’s 7th birthday our lives fell apart when we received the devastating news that Daya had a rare form of non-hogkins lymphoma that only 2 children in the UK are diagnosed with a year, because of the severity she would need aggressive chemotherapy that would mean she would live in hospital for the next 5 months. As some of you may know back in February last year two weeks after loosing my grandad to cancer my mums health took a turn for the worse leaving her unable to walk for the past 11 months with her finally being able to make the change to just a crutch last month, losing our dog, our grandad who lived with us and then my mums health, took a massive toll on Daya leaving her distressed and confused at such a young age. Due to my mums health she is out of work but with this now situation my dad will also be out of work being a 24 hour carer for Daya as they both will live in the hospital with her, this means there is no income in my household and has left my 14 year old sister living back and forth between me and my grandparents.

As a family we are broken but trying to be as upbeat and positive for Daya and keep hope for the future. I wanted to create this fundraiser to give Daya things to look forward to after she finishes chemo, her dream is to go on a family holiday to Disneyland and I want to make that possible for her. To be able to make everything as comfortable and as joyful that it can be for her. Daya is autistic so can find it hard to concentrate and be in the same place for a long period of time, due to this she needs a lot of simulation throughout her five month stay, as her hospital room will be the only place she can be. This will also be to relieve some financial pressure off my family at this difficult time.

Daya is a strong and brave little girl and I have no doubt she will beat this. My heart breaks seeing such a fun smiley little girl turn so sad to be fighting the battle no one should have to fight, especially at her young age. Her braveness through all she has faced so far makes me so unbelievably proud. Any support and prayers would mean the world to Daya, myself and my family.