help us pay for our mums funeral and debt

I am writing this on behalf of my little family, Leilani, Meilitsa (my younger sister) and Dawn (our mum).

My mum Dawn who is 50, was diagnosed with HER2-positive breast cancer in February 2021. When she found the lump it was already 9x5cm and quickly spread to her lymph nodes. She started chemo two weeks after it was found and started having every side effect possible in reaction to the chemotherapy. Eventually, had one breast removed and the cancer and by this point (2 years after) it had spread to her neck and cervix- so she also had her cervix removed.

All the while, she had chemo with non-changing test results, reduction in size of the tumor by 3cm, but it spread elsewhere.

At the end of August 2023, after healing from her 13 hour surgery and being in the ICU for two weeks afterwards (another scare!) she was cleared of having cancer for 4 weeks.

When I arrive in Berlin to start my year abroad, we receive the news that she has cancer again, and it’s terminal, giving her a life span of 5 years with chemo until she dies, or 18 months without treatment.

I will also use the funds to hire a legal team to do Medical investigations, as they did not ever do a full body scan before telling her she had no cancer.

Around Christmas time the doctors say the cancer is untreatable as it has spread too much and she has much less than a year and a half - it spread to her bones, including her spine, lungs, neck, shoulders, legs her cervix (again-even though it was removed??) and eventually brain.

Devastating.

During these years, my mum also desperately struggled with mental health problems, and she tried to end her life 4 times, both before and after her diagnosis.

My sister lived at home in this time, (whilst i was at university) and really struggled handling being the only other adult in the house, the health care system let us down and I would like to be able to pay for a lawyer because:

1. She was told she had no cancer at all, but 4 weeks later it was in all of her bones- they did not check her body properly.

2. During appointments they would regularly not listen to my mums wants and troubles.

3. The chemotherapy symptoms she developed were also killing her, with not enough symptom control.

There was no break for her! Physically, or mentally.

She has struggled to receive appropriate care from nhs services, making dealing with her illness and complicated diagnosis extremly painful and hard for everyone.

My mum has been the only parental figure in our lives and the only person to care for me and my younger sister, and now her cancer has reached its final stage.

We have been financially supporting ourselves by always working full time, ever since we were teenagers, to pay for our rent, school, and all other personal expenses. When my mum dies, my sister and I will have to take on all her her financial responsibilities as well, including the costs of her funeral. Studying at university and the income of my sister does not support this.

My sister and I both competed in Europeans for gymnastics which meant my mum worked two jobs almost all of our lives and took out many loans, and sacrificed on bills to pay for us to train. We now have around £14,000 in debt to pay too.

My mum is a fighter and was given weeks to live in March, as the cancer spread faster than we thought, then given days to live on the 18th June, but she’s still going- even waking after being unresponsive for 3 days :)

I am asking you if you can support me and my little sister with paying for our mum’s funeral and her debt to relieve some of this financial pressure. and all donations will mean the world to me and make things a bit more manageable in this hard time.

I want to give my mum a dignified funeral- with the cheapest options being £200 for a cardboard box to put her in- she deserves more!

thank you for reading<3