Please help Helen Mena Moreno and her family

Hi, My name is Veronica Byrnes. Helen Mena Moreno and her sons, Sebastian and Kevin work for me at the Amelia Island Williams House Bed and Breakfast . Helen's youngest daughter, Ashly was diagnosed with leukemia in September 2023. Their family needs help to cover extensive medical bills and other mounting expenses as Helen is unable to work so that she can care for her daughter. Here is their story as told by Helen's husband Brad.

On September 22, our 12-year-old daughter Ashly lost a baby tooth, and her gums bled profusely through the night. Strange, tiny spots and random bruises appeared all over her skin. Two separate urgent care centers didn’t make the connection between the bleeding, bruises, and spots, but we had a previously scheduled appointment with her primary care physician, Dr. Bruce West, for a few days later (September 26th). The best we could do was wait for that appointment.

Once the nurse practitioner at Dr. West’s office saw Ashly, she connected the dots and suspected something serious. A finger prick revealed that Ashly’s hemoglobin was at 5.5 (it should be 12 or higher) and we were told to rush to Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville.

Wolfson admitted Ashly right away and conducted further testing. Soon, one of the residents revealed she had pancytopenia, essentially a low level of all three of the major blood cell types: red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. I’s already suspected the worst, but the pancytopenia diagnosis was what really made my stomach drop. I didn’t need to be a doctor to know that there are no benign causes behind a child’s body producing little or no new blood cells, so I began researching the various causes of pancytopenia.

While the most obvious cause of such a problem in a child of Ashly’s age had to be leukemia, I hoped against hope I’d find other possibilities less terrifying. But every listed cause of pancytopenia was a complete nightmare, and the more I studied the symptoms of leukemia, the more it became clear it was for sure the malady that most closely fit everything we’d seen up to that point. I told Helen what I’d discovered and what I believed was going on. That moment was extremely painful for her, and this was when the tears first began flowing.

We got what little sleep we could that night in the hospital room, and early the next morning the hematologist asked to speak with us. The three of us went into a conference room, where he calmly broke it to us that what we most feared was indeed the case. She had B-Cell All, she was in a high-risk category due to her age (being past nine or ten years old carries greater risks), and she would begin chemotherapy the next morning.

After more tears, we broke the news to Ashly, which was the hardest part of the entire ugly affair. Ashly is so strong, though, and such a fighter, that within an hour of the initial shock, she had switched gears into “warrior mode” and was ready to do whatever had to be done.

Since, Ashly has had to stop playing basketball, and hasn’t been able to attend school at all. She’s as strong as they come and is fighting valiantly, but the aggressive chemotherapy doesn’t leave her feeling well enough to do anything else. She’s always loved playing sports, so having to be sedentary has been extremely challenging.

In the current phase of her treatment, she receives a lumbar puncture every week (so they can confirm the leukemia hasn’t entered her spinal fluid and also to give chemotherapy specifically for that area, just to be safe) and chemotherapy four times a week, so her life basically consists of alternately receiving treatment and then resting up to get ready for the next round. This current phase lasts another six weeks, and if she has responded well after that, she will continue regular treatment of various kinds for a further 24 months. If she responds less well, then everything is up in the air, as the medical team will have to devise alternative and/or experimental treatments.

This is where we are: hoping the next six weeks go well so that she can be put on a conventional path of treatment and so the two years of treatment to come have the best odds possible of putting her into complete remission and keeping her there forever.

NOTE: Ashly’s specific diagnosis is B-Cell All (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia). It is commonly abbreviated as just B-ALL.