HelpME

This is a campaign to raise money to help give a chronically ill young woman a kickstart in life.  The items we are raising money for are in the wishlist at the bottom of the page. The 'target' we set was just a general one because the wishlist items are the most urgent target. The paragraphs below detail who she is, what she believes in, what she is suffering with, and why she needs your help. As an overview, Jessica has the following illnesses:


·      Myalgic encephalomyelitis (and various complications thereof)

·      Social Anxiety Disorder

·      Emetophobia

·      Panic Disorder

·      Agoraphobia

·      Generalised Anxiety Disorder

·      Major Depressive Disorder

·      Dissociative Hallucinations

·      Irlen Syndrome

·      Auditory Processing Disorder

·      Retained Moro reflex alongside other retained reflexes.

 

We are trying to raise money to get Jessica the best wheelchair possible, and some equipment that will help her manage activities that she can’t currently do as a result of her poor health. As an 18 year old, she should have graduated school this year, and would theoretically now be preparing to head off to uni. Unfortunately, despite pushing through it all for many years and somehow getting the AS grades that she needs, her health got even worse, and the past year Jessica has been off school, bed/housebound the majority of the time. She intends to go back in September to finish her A-levels, but there is no chance that this can happen without appropriate support.

 

Her psychiatric problems are being treated, and in the past she has made great steps towards remission, to the extent that she has only had a few panic attacks in the last two years (as opposed to 10 a day previously). However, in order to stay mentally healthy, Jessica needs to be putting her therapy into practice every day, and she can’t do this when she is stuck in bed, or in the house, because of her ME.

The treatment of ME patients in the UK is awful. It is grouped with ‘CFS’, and not respected as the primarily neurological illness that it is. ME is an infection of the brain stem, which affects all of the bodies systems, including cardiac, respiratory, nerve, endocrine, immune, and glandular. The NHS only provides counselling/CBT, which given that the illness isn’t psychological, isn’t helpful in treating the actual symptoms, just the depression that can come from living with such a debilitating illness.

We do everything we can, but don’t have the financial ability to afford treatment privately, and we are currently fighting for Jessica to get support from the government to afford the things that she needs in order to have at least a decent quality of life. We have been waiting for help since December 2014, and can’t wait any longer. If Jessica is to get back to school and gain her qualifications, she needs help now.

Jessica contracted ME in 2011, but due to her numerous and complex psychiatric illnesses, it wasn’t immediately apparent what was wrong. By trying to ‘push through’ the symptoms, Jessica has become incredibly ill, and her prognosis is now a lot worse than it would be if she were to have rested and been given appropriate treatment when she first fell ill with this disease.

 
She is an incredibly hard working person, and in fact has only become so ill because of her inability to slow down and let herself heal. She strives to become better and kinder everyday, but right now needs to be kind to herself, otherwise she cannot help other people as she wants to.

Please help us to support Jessica before she gets even worse, potentially irrevocably.

 
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Jessica is an 18 year old crazy cat lady, pizza addict, and wearer of red lipstick and monochromatic outfits. She is a book lover, amateur baker, avid learner, and her dream in life is to help others in a multitude of ways.



Jessica has always wanted to be a writer in some capacity, and now dreams of writing alongside speaking, campaigning/activism, enterprise, teaching, and humanitarian work. She is enrolled on a TEFL course, and wants to teach English as a second language across the globe, with particular interests in teaching in Cambodia and Pakistan. She wants to travel, and to use her experiences with difficult things to help others through similar situations. Ultimately, when well enough, Jessica aspires to study Human, Social and Political Science at the University of Cambridge, and then pursue further post-graduate degrees in the area.


Things she cares about:

 
·      Human life/quality of life, suffering prevention, humanitarian aid etc.

·      Black lives, and the treatment of POC.

·      The treatment of women globally, and reproductive rights.

·      GSD (gender and sexuality diversity) rights and treatment.

·      A fairer justice system, political system, and society, in Britain and abroad.

·      Improve access to and quality of education around the world.

·      Greater parity of esteem between ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ health.

·      Raising awareness and respect for serious illnesses that aren’t cancer and/or aren’t life threatening. E.g. lupus, MS, EDS, hypermobility, endometriosis.

·      Making people happy + spreading joy.


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When Jessica was born in February 1997, she was a healthy baby. There were no immediate or obvious problems, and from her parents’ perspective, she was a dream child. Sleeping through the night from a young age, and being a smiley/happy baby, nobody would have thought that anything could go wrong.  However, in November 1997, Jessica got food poisoning, which lead to particularly violent vomiting. This probably seems insignificant, and certainly did at the time, but from a psychological perspective, being so violently ill at such a young age was a traumatic experience, and therefore, from nine months old, Jessica has suffered with a phobia called ‘emetophobia’ which is the clinical fear of vomiting/sickness/nausea and anything associated with it. There are two types: fear of oneself being sick/nauseous; fear of others being sick/nauseous. Jessica has both. Her phobia became more and more apparent as she grew older, and eventually when she was seven a name was put to it and she began various holistic treatments (e.g. hypnotherapy). By this point, having such a severe phobia from such a young age had lead to Jessica developing several other psychiatric illnesses; generalised anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder + agoraphobia, as well as dissociative hallucinations (which were mild at the time – and seemed like normal childhood imaginary friends/daydreams). After a traumatic experience in 2007, Jessica suffered a ‘mental breakdown’, missed months of school, and became very depressed. In 2008, this depression became clinical, and by the time she was 14, Jessica was so suicidal that she finally had to tell someone how bad it had got. In July 2011, whilst on holiday, Jessica became very physically ill. Initially, the mental illness masked the ME, as well as her learning difficulties and retained reflexes. The ME was assumed to be just the physicality of having severe major depressive disorder. Furthermore, after not telling anyone how difficult it was for her to read and to understand what people are saying, her Irlen syndrome and APD were not diagnosed until 2013. Jessica is not someone who likes to ask for help, or feel like she is quitting, and so dealt with this alone and compensated for her health with an extremely high work ethic. However, she is human, and herculean efforts to overcome disability are not sustainable.

 


Over the past 12 months or so, Jessica has had to drop out of school, and has been unable to leave the house more than a couple of times a week. The majority of the time when she does leave the house, it is in the car to go for ‘a drive’ in an effort to get her out of confinement, without her having to really be outside.

Jessica can do very little by herself. She relies on her family for support with mobility, nutrition, dressing/washing, transportation, managing finances, speaking to doctors etc. She has gone from being a very independent and mature teenager, capable of handling complex adult tasks, to someone who needs help with basic functions.

Her mobility has gradually got worse and worse, meaning she is really struggling to walk. Jessica can move her legs; she isn’t paralysed. The issue is pain, exhaustion, numbness, tremors, shakiness and dizziness. Self-propelling a wheelchair would be counterproductive, but she does have a manual wheelchair for use with an attendant. What she needs is a power chair that will give her the freedom and independence of mobility that most 18 year olds have. Having to be pushed around by her family, or only lasting 10 minutes walking and then being bed-bound as a result is having a hugely negative impact on Jessica’s already awful mental health.

Equipment that helps relieve the symptoms of her illnesses, make certain tasks easier etc. will also change Jessica’s life immeasurably. With the right support, she can start to live a slightly more ‘normal’ life, and achieve the things that she wants to.

For information on what ME is, and how severe it is, please click here, and/or follow the links provided at the bottom of this description.

 


Over the years we (her parents) and close friends of the family have spent large amounts of money on treatment for Jessica. We are floored by the generosity of our friends, but we cannot ask this much of them. As a family, we are not poor by any stretch of the imagination. We are incredibly privileged, and are able to afford a lot of nice things and luxuries which we do not take for granted, and are incredibly grateful for. However, we are also not rich, and we cannot afford the treatment and equipment that Jessica needs. We are hoping that by crowdsourcing, we can raise the money needed by lots of small donations, rather than a few large ones.

In December 2014 we applied for Personal Independence Payment for Jessica. 8 months later, we are still waiting, and we cannot wait anymore. Crowdsourcing is the last way that we can get the equipment she needs to go back to school, and actually live a life. We will use PIP to pay for treatment, but rely on this campaign to pay for her wheelchair and equipment.

 

Jessica does not like asking for or taking help from people. We as a family also struggle with this. Starting this campaign has been very hard for us, as we feel like we should be able to do this ourselves, and not rely on the generosity of others. Jessica is sick with guilt for having to ask this from people, but this is the only way we have left. She has made three suicide attempts in the last two years, and the reality is that she cannot go on living like this. Having the resources that she needs will not only make her disease more manageable, but will improve her mental health and make life more bearable. From there, Jessica can start to work towards doing the things she wants to do in life, and making the impact on the world that we all know she is desperate to make. This young woman cares so much, and has so much to give, but at the moment her potential cannot be realised because she is so ill. Please help her, so that one day she can help others.

 

In 2013 Jessica gave a speech to 250 people, including the then leader of the opposition, Ed Miliband. The speech was at the launch of a mental health charity, and she spoke about her experiences with severe mental illness, receiving a standing ovation from the crowd.

She has appeared on several radio and TV shows speaking about mental health discrimination, and the treatment of young people with mental illness or mental health problems. These include: BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5, BBC Newsnight, Sky News, BBC Radio Gloucestershire, and various newspapers.

In 2014, despite battling five anxiety disorders, Jessica jumped out of a plane in aid of the mental health charity Mind. She raised £1000, and although it was one of the most difficult things she has ever done, she was adamant that she had to do it in order to raise money for charity.

Those small things she has achieved were done whilst she was very ill, and she is even more severely ill now. By helping Jessica, we hope that you will be helping her to get back to speaking, writing and campaigning about issues that matter. We have nothing to offer in terms of rewards, so we mention the small victories above to show that your generosity will not only help Jess, but will help the people that she helps.

 

The things that Jessica needs have been split into categories using the wish list function. These mean that certain elements can be funded faster, and you can watch your money help Jessica receive a specific thing relating to the wheelchair etc.

Realistically, there is a lot more that Jessica needs in order to manage her illnesses. However, we are hoping that these can be obtained using PIP. This campaign is for things that she needs ASAP, and has no other way of affording. It is also likely that this equipment would not be covered by the amount given in PIP anyway.

We are not asking for big donations (although they are welcome!). Honestly, just £1 would mean the world to Jessica. We know that she will cherish every single person who is kind enough to help her start living, instead of just having a pulse.

 


PS: Jess has been a huge Taylor Swift fan since reading an article about her in 2006. Listening to Taylor’s music has helped her through some of the darkest times. She is also a huge fan of the Ellen show. Both Taylor and Ellen are extremely generous and love to make life better for their fans. We know it is a long shot, but if we could get Taylor or Ellen to see this campaign, we think it would help a lot. We are relying on the kindness of strangers, and hope that we can use the power of the internet for good, to help achieve our financial goal. She is also a passionate cheer coach, but is too unwell to be coaching at the moment. Sharing this with Taylor Swift, Ellen DeGeneres, among the cheerleading community, and/or with your friends, family, colleagues etc. will be immensely appreciated. 

We have created the hashtags #TeamDiamond and #HelpME to try and pick up steam. Please tag these when sharing if you want to!

 

Love,

 

Jess, family, and friends xoxo

 

Some links to information about Jessica’s illnesses:

(will be adding these soon)