Help for McKayla with her medical stuff

Hello everyone,

My name is Renee. I'm creating this fundraiser to ask for help with McKayla's medical bills and some of her living expenses.

For those who don't know her, here's a little bit about Mack. She was an honor student in High School and graduated in 2019, receiving a scholarship to St. Joseph's College in Patchogue. She had left school due to covid and medical issues starting to show their "ugly" head, which she had no idea the cause and was misdiagnosed by her doctors at the time. She then moved to Arizona with friends to get a new start on her life when all of this started.

 

A little about what's been going on. In April/May of 2021, Mack had a blood clot behind her eye, which is obviously not normal for a 19, almost 20 yr old girl. Once that happened, the hospital that she was at in Arizona had to air lift her to a different hospital in Phoneix so that they could adequately care for her and diagnose her with PNH and severe aplastic anemia. She was then in the hospital for two weeks to treat that incident. Upon release, she had to travel 4 hours each way in order to receive blood and platelet transfusions that were necessary to keep her stable. That continued on until Aug 2021, when the doctors informed her that she would require a stem cell transplant in hopes of putting the PNH and aplastic anemia in remission. The only problem with that was she would have to be within 20 minutes of Phoneix hospital after she was released for a year. Because she had no immediate family in Arizona, she made the difficult choice to move back home with her mom and step-dad in New York.

In Aug 2021, her mother made the flight to Arizona so that she could drive Mack back the New York since flying was not medically allowed. The high elevation of the flight would have made her bleed to death. Upon arrival back in New York, Mack was taken straight to Stoneybrook University hospital Er, where they kept her for two nights and gave her a referral to her current doctor. Her current doctor then made the call that she had to go 2-3 times a week to the Stoneybrook cancer center for blood and platelet transfusion until a stem donor match was found. This search alone took 6 months.

During the wait to find a donor, Mack was traveling 20 miles each way two to three times a week for her transfusions. We finally found a donor match on Feb 24, 2022, in order to start her stem cell transplant, which required 1 week of chemo. The transplant took place on March 1st, and then from there, she was to receive chemo push every other day for 11 days. In between all of this, Mack contracted pneumonia, a bacterial infection of the blood and ecoli of the blood, as well as severe cellulitis. She was in the ICU at Stoneybrook for one week and was then transferred back to the transplant ward, where she is still fighting cellulitis as well as continuing antibiotics for pneumonia. As of now, she no longer has the bacterial infection and is clear from the Ecoli infection, but is still on high watch due to her immune system being so fragile.

 

McKayla still has a long way to go before we can be certain that the stem cell transplant worked. One year to be exact, till they can confidently say the PNH and aplastic anemia is 100% in remission. She will have to go to Stonybrook cancer center three times a week until they drop it down to 2 times, then 1 time a week and eventually push it out to biweekly, then monthly. We will have to watch for a host to graph disease, which means her body can start rejecting the donor's stem cells. We also have to watch that the PNH does not cause other issues to arise. The chances for the aplastic anemia to go into remission are in her favor, but the PNH percentages of going into remission are not as high. She will have to regain her strength over time and may never truly feel like herself again. Any help is greatly appreciated and will not be forgotten. We promise to pay it forward once we are in a position to do so.