We are raising money for our sweet Mands, who was diagnosed with Severe Aplastic Anemia. She is currently hospitalized awaiting Engraftment from a Bone Marrow Transplant she underwent just a few weeks ago. Our goal is to raise at least $20,000 as soon as possible to help her as much we can as she is a single mom, raising her son, Eli, and still has expenses to take care of while she is going through this challenge. She will be unable to work for at least 6 months and expenses are adding quickly (i.e. medical bills, a hair wig, egg preservation, child expenses, and car payment just to name a few) and will continue to accrue over the next long year of recovery. 
We are so grateful for the support and love that has been shown thus far in Manda's journey. We are grateful for anything you are able to contribute.
Thank you!

B A C K G R O U N D ( MANDA'S WORDS)
Towards the ends of Summer '18 I noticed I started to feel more fatigued; especially when I would exercise. I told my PCP and she ran some blood work. Everything looked normal, just a little low in Vitamin D so I started taking supplements. Fast forward to a few days before Thanksgiving. I wasn't feeling super great. I was having abdominal pain and couldn't keep much down. I decided to go to the ER just to get things checked out. They did a CT scan which had normal results and did some lab work that didn't look so great. My RBC, WBC, and platelets were all low so they told me to go see a hematologist. A couple days later I still wasn't feeling well so I went back to the ER. They did an ultrasound on my gallbladder showing normal results but again showing abnormal lab results. The next week I went and had a bone marrow biopsy then had to wait another week to get the results. I was a nervous wreck (a good lesson of patience and faith for me) waiting that long.

I went to see a hematologist at the Bone Marrow Clinic where they reviewed the results with us again. Not going to lie, when I first heard the word Aplastic Anemia I thought it meant I was anemic and it would be a quick fix with some iron. I wish that were the case. I ended up learning that aplastic anemia is basically another word for bone marrow failure. It is when your marrow stops producing the right amount of RBC, WBC, and platelets. The doctors ran more tests to see if they could find a cause but they all came back negative. So pretty much my immune system started attacking itself somewhere along the line. They decided to watch my counts every couple of weeks to see if anything improved but over the course of the next 8 months my counts ended up getting worse. I started needing blood transfusions. Depending on the severity of Aplastic Anemia determines how they treat it. Blood transfusions, immunosuppressants, bone marrow transplant.

When I was first diagnosed I wasn't quite in the severe category so they decided to just keep an eye on things. The first line of treatment for Severe Aplastic Anemia is a bone marrow transplant (BMT) if you have a sibling match. (This is one of those times it's a blessing to have multiple siblings ;) If not, they treat it with immunosuppressants.

We decided to have all of my siblings tested just in case thing started to go downhill. All of my siblings were so amazing and willing to donate if they were a match. They all went up one morning and had their blood drawn. A few days later we got the news that Sam was a perfect match! I continued doing weekly labs and getting biopsies every few months. On May 8th my hematocrit had dropped to 22 so I got my first 2 units of RBC. Leading up to transplant I ended up getting 7 units of RBC and 6 units of platelets.