Mia is 18 years old. For the past five years she’s been battling what they thought was Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It’s only recently that she and her family discovered that all along, Mia has had Lyme Disease.
What this means is that this girl who should be just starting out in life, who should be enjoying school, going out with her friends, falling in love for the first time-has had to live in what amounts to a medically induced solitary confinement. To go to a recent family wedding, she had to sleep the entire day before-and then she managed two hours at the reception, then had to go and sleep in the bridal suite before being taken home.
If she needs to go anywhere that involves more than a few minutes of walking, she has to be in a wheelchair. But in the face of all this, she refuses to give up. She’s even managed to graduate high school by getting the teachers to send her work home because she didn’t want to fall behind.
Now, the current treatment here in Australia is a hardcore course of antibiotics, running for anywhere from 12 months to 2 or 3 years. But the effectiveness of the treatment hinges on early detection. Mia’s case is now so advanced that her body simply won’t tolerate the doses required for that long. Her organs will shut down. It’s as straightforward as that.
However, Mia’s family have been absolutely tireless in their search for a cure for their daughter. And they’ve found one, a treatment being pioneered by a doctor in Florida, whose own daughter suffered through the same ordeal. At the end of this post there’s a link to a new blog that her family have just put up, and details of the treatment are there if you’d like more information.
And here’s where you and I come in folks. The family has taken a second mortgage on their home to raise the money to get her to Florida and have the treatment-which will take 10 weeks, and keep them there until after Christmas. She leaves for Florida on Melbourne Cup Day. And so, Kylie has organised a Cup Eve fundraising trivia night here in Frankston to help them along. I’ll be there, and I’m asking you to come along too.
Details of the night are on the blog. The winners won’t walk away with armfuls of prizes, and there won’t be fantastic giveaways all night long (although I can almost promise you I’ll have some truly awful CD’s to give away, as always). The prize is going to be seeing this amazingly brave young person get the treatment to save her life.
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