Dear friends, colleagues, and comrades, 

How are you? We hope you are well. 

All of you know Gus Miclat. What not all of you might know is that his youngest daughter has been sick for quite some time with Acute Lymphocitic Leukemia or A.L.L. , and has been going through intensive chemotherapy for a few years now. Unfortunately, it looks like she will need to continue with intensive chemo treatment for a few more years.

Maria is currently going through a series of weekly so-called cyclo procedures which is an intensive 5-hour chemo treatment. This is being done over her daily chemo oral medicines. Depending on her weekly blood tests, she needs to undergo regular spinal taps and a quarterly bone marrow extraction to determine (and/or contain) the spread of the nasty cells to her brain. She's been going through episodes of persistent headaches and vomiting as most likely side effects of the treatments. She underwent a recent CT scan because of this to see if it was more than that. The duration of her entire treatment will be 3 years and she'll be achieving her second year this coming November. If she goes into remission, another 2 years without medicines will be observed and if she continues to be okay, she will be finally clear of the illness then.

As you can imagine, this has been incredibly draining both emotionally and financially on Maria, Gus and the family. And they do not want to bother anyone by asking for help. 

So we will ask instead. We would like to ask your help with two things: help cheer Maria up as much as we can; and help them financially in any way you can. 

For the first one, we would like to ask you to record a short video message for her and send it to Gus. He can then play them to her, which will hopefully go a little way towards cheering her up. You can send them to Gus at [email redacted]. 

Second, it is greatly appreciated if anyone who is able to can make a donation through this page, or directly to the family through the links in the image above. 
We realize that these are hard times for everyone, so if you cannot spare anything, we, and Gus, will completely understand. 

Thank you everyone! We really appreciate any help you can offer. And more importantly, so do Maria, Gus and the rest of their family. 

Love, 

Marc Batac, Meri Joyce and Marte Hellema

PS - The photograph is from an online benefit concert to be held for Maria on November 1 at 8-10 pm Philippines time, dubbed "Together We ALL Dream For Maria" - please join this evening of songs and great spiels to raise awareness about A.L.L. that is rampant among children and young adults, and share far and wide!

https://www.facebook.com/SingOutbytheSouth