Chiari is going to paralyse me, please help!

Chiari + Syringomyelia is going to paralyze my daughter Bonnie before she is 21. Please help us get Bonnie the emergency surgery she needs.

The surgery is set for 22nd February 2023.

Hi, my name is Theresa and I have 5 beautiful children. But I would like to tell you about my daughter Bonnie, a 20-year-old, country girl from Hobart, Tasmania.

Bonnie is an incredible person, who has always carried a beautiful zest for life, delving into the creative spaces of photography + film and was very active in her early teenage years, including a love for cricket, which in 2016 she began playing competitively for Southern Tasmania.

This was until she became unwell. At the age of 14, Bonnie was diagnosed with Chiari malformation and Syringomyelia and she had to give up cricket and much more which broke her heart.

The following years involved two decompression surgeries (these included removing bone from Bonnie’s skull and C1 vertebrae - at the top of her spine), fluid on the brain, resulting in the need for an external drain, nerve damage to her arms and hands and debilitating migraines.

If this wasn’t enough, her mental health deteriorated as she was diagnosed with PTSD and experienced extreme anxiety and depression.

Bonnie hasn’t been the same since and life has not been easy. Struggling to keep up with her studies and trying to live a normal life has been nearly impossible. But still, she has never given up.

Bonnie moved to Melbourne 18 months ago for better treatment and to attempt to restore a sense of independence and normality in her life. She even enrolled at Swinburne University and began studying film and photography, one of her greatest loves. But at the end of 2022, Bonnie started (again) experiencing extreme pain in her spine, where they discovered a returned cyst (so large that it covers the C3 - C6 spinal area) and that she had developed scoliosis, resulting in the need for a walking stick, having seizures and increasing weakness in her arms and legs.

We were told that if the cyst is left untreated, it can progress to quadriplegia, which is paralyzation from the neck down. Bonnie is only 20 years old.

The reason we have set up this fund is to help Bonnie receive life-changing surgery at Macquarie University Hospital in Sydney with the leading specialist for these conditions, Professor Marcus Stoodley.

Unfortunately, the Royal Melbourne Hospital, where Bonnie is based, doesn't want to treat her, due to this being a surgery with extremely high-risk factors. This means we have no choice but to go private and get her surgery underway as quickly as possible. This will cost thousands.

This is Bonnie’s story in a nutshell and I thank you for reading it. Your support towards Bonnie’s surgery guarantees that she will not end up with quadriplegia and it will relieve her of a lot of the pain that she lives with daily.

Whatever you can donate, big or small, is going to save Bonnie from living a life as a quadriplegic.

If you would like to read more about Chiari + Syringomyelia click the link here