Helping Fleur to Survive

Dear friends,

Restarting the fundraiser again, trusting and hoping that new funds will come in over time. For new contributors, kindly find a bit of history below.

Fleur went from a lively and seemingly healthy to a very sick little lady. She was rushed into Rockingham hospital on 6th of December 2018, after collapsing at school. The situation was very serious, so shortly afterwards she was moved by ambulance to the intensive care unit in Perth Children's Hospital. Fleur was very close to passing away that day, very close.

An MRI followed which made clear she had a brain tumor. We had to decide quickly what to do, and authorised the doctors to remove the tumour surgically, actually saving her life, and limiting further damage to her brain.

Unfortunately we could not prevent it, Fleur's brain is badly damaged by the tumour and the stroke. We are lucky she is still alive, and remains partially paralysed on her right side, and with lots of therapy will likely partially recover. Her long term memory is pretty good, short term is still challenging. We are hopeful she might recover 70-80% but she'll never be as fit as she was before, running around and doing taekwando (green belt!).

The cancer has spread through her spine, a malignant cancer type, Anaplastic Pleomorphic Xantho Astrocytoma (APXA), which is extremely difficult to treat, and has low survival rates, 20-80% in the first 5 years. The targeted chemo medications are working well, they reduced the cancer by about 50%. Next week (5/3) we will have another MRI to see if further reduction is visible. So we are cautiously positive, but also learned this beast of a tumour is always lurching in the dark, and can regrow rapidly.

The hospital is great and supportive, and we get a lot of direction and guidance from the doctors. Even though we believe a lot is covered by Medicare, or our private insurance, there will be a lot of costs not covered. Specially drugs which are not covered by medical schemes, like immune technologies, therapeutical or natural remedies.

From your kind donations we bought an adjustable bed, and recliner chair. We just started with the bathroom renovation, and found out that it is quite a lot more expensive than anticipated. We still want to change other things to provide Fleur better access and mobility. Miranda is driving 3 times per week to hospital for Fleur's therapy sessions, 360 km per week, which we also pay from the funds.

Other support like from Centrelink or NDIS is still not approved, whilst we filed all paperwork in December. Mike is back to work, but only short term for 3 months, with no assurance yet that the contract will be extended.

We need your help, that's why we reopened it again. Please keep supporting our cause.

Thank you so much.

Love The Bakker’s

PS. Voor onze Nederlandse vrienden, we hebben Paypal toegevoegd; of Rabobank 105827568 tnv Michael en Miranda Bakker onder vermelding van Donatie voor Fleur. (IBAN is NL20RABO0105827568).