Mphango’s Acute Myeloid Leukaemia Fund

Hi my name is Ann, I am setting this GoFund Me up on behalf of my friend Mphango who was diagnosed on 23rd November 2022 ( just a week after her fathers 7years anniversary of his passing to non hodgkin's lymphoma) with a rare type of blood cancer, Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) at the age of 24, she has no health insurance and had just used her savings to move out. Now with a chronic illness, receiving sick pay as she has had to take time away from work and getting government financial help, unfortunately they are not giving her enough to cover everything and when she is a inpatient she receives nothing and she is frequently an inpatient, the funds made from this fundraiser will go towards a multitude of expenses ( travel, food, medical expenses, housing expenses etc).

Also as you all know the most common side effect from chemotherapy is hair loss, we might not realise it but hair is a big part of our identity as people and this is very true for mphango she had finally finished growing her hair out ,stopped wearing wigs to transition to having her natural hair out, she was that confident in becoming a natural hair girlie that she donated away her old wigs thinking she would never need them again to only end up watching her hair fall out, this was a very traumatic experience for her so some of the funds will also go towards getting her a realistic looking wig she feels comfortable and confident in, we all want Mphango to feel a little like herself again and to help her on her recovery back to having independence again. Let’s pull together and support her in buying a wig.

It’s been an incredibly difficult few months for Mphango. She has gone through several rounds of chemo, staying multiple weeks as an inpatient at hospitals putting a huge strain on her mental health. Mphango’s Mum has stayed here in London as often as she can, taking big chunks of time off work to support her daughter in treatment.

Although Mphango has been supported by her wonderful bosses, she unfortunately hasn’t been able to return to work yet. Even with support from her family and friends, there is no hiding from the fact that finances have been extremely challenging. Disability benefits only go so far, and the amount of unexpected expenses even just on transport has been astronomical.

Keeping up with bills, unexpected additional costs, living expenses such as rent has been a big challenge… We would be incredibly grateful if you could support us in our goal to raise as close to £10,000 as possible. This money will all go towards supporting Mphango’s living expenses over the next few months.

On behalf of all her support system and loved ones, we all feel eternally grateful for any financial support you can offer, and for all the prayers of support. Please share this with your own friends and family ❤️

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Read Mphango’s full diagnosis story here:

Mphango had always dreamed of moving to London, she had just started the perfect remote job in her chosen field that would also allow her to “start living her best life”.

Around 3 weeks before moving to London, Mphango noticed her left eye had started swelling up. After calling NHS 111 hoping to get seen by someone, she received a text back saying that due to high volumes etc she wouldn’t be receiving a call back.

As you can imagine, even with not getting a call back we were starting to get concerned as her eye continued to cause her discomfort, so we headed straight to A&E.

We waited for 8 hours before Mphango got seen by anyone at A&E. She was told it looked as though it was simply an eye irritation and to treat it with a warm water compress.

We followed the instructions as we were told but after one week of doing this, her eye was only getting worse. The swelling was worse and her vision was now starting to deplete.

We eventually managed to get an emergency GP appointment, her eye was examined to the best of their ability and Mphango was advised it could be an infection. She was prescribed antibiotics and they took swaps of the eye for testing.

After the first night on antibiotics, Mphango’s eye genuinely looked like it was going to fall out of it’s socket. As you can imagine, even after seeing so many health professionals at this stage, we were feeling pretty terrified about this situation getting so much worse, both in appearance, pain and blurry vision.

We quickly went back to A&E, waiting a few more hours and eventually got seen by a doctor who called an ophthalmologist who advised it could be either a stye or conjunctivitis. She was given some eye ointment to treat conjunctivitis.

We had only 4 days until move in day across the country. Feeling utterly frustrated and dissatisfied with the lack of care or treatment, Mphango was so close to giving up. We had no choice but to explore private healthcare options for as soon as we would arrive in London as we weren’t getting the support we needed.

Fast forward to move in day, we’ve travelled down to London, dropped off her bags in her new flat. Mphango was in agony with the swelling and pressure build up. We instantly took her to A&E, the first nurse that saw her was stunned that no other professional had persisted with any treatments.

They first did some blood tests that alerted the doctors to abnormalities in the results this was the first inckling that something was wrong, as it was around 3am already from being their from 5pm that day, we had to wait until 8am the next day to be transferred to a different hospital with ophthalmologist specialists.

In the course of 4 days at this hospital they did a lot more blood tests and an MRI scan. The scan revealed that the eye was being pushed out the by a fast growing mass, it was producing a lot of pressure on the main optical nerve causing her blurred vision, it was also too close to the brain for the doctors to surgically remove so they performed a surgery that concluded of , a biopsy of the mass behind the eye, stitching the eye shut in an attempt to preserve the eye sight, a bone marrow biopsy and a lumbar puncture this all went to urgent testing. They were unable to perform the lumbar puncture during the surgery so they did it that another day after a CT scan.

After all this she was given the diagnosis and a multidisciplinary team was organised and they had meetings on what was the best course of treatment for mphango. It was decided that she was to have 10 day’s intensive radiotherapy to the eye at the same time she received fertility treatments, she had fertility treatments in order to harvest and freeze her eggs so she could have the opportunity to have kids in the future.

Once she had her eggs harvested she received a call from a nurse working the a doctor who specialises in AML they had a different course of chemo treatment that had higher rates of survival than the treatment being offered at this hospital so she decided to move her care to the cancer specialist hospital where this AML doctor worked, they started her on intensive chemotherapy that day.

Fast forward to today she is still currently receiving treatment as both out and in patient she has completed 3/4 cycles and has experienced lot of the terrible side effects that come with intense chemotherapy.

We pray that she will get an all clear one day

Thank you for you donations and we will keep you all updated.