Mum's race against time to fund lifesaving brain surgery
A mother of four, in a race against time to have life-saving brain surgery, has been forced to turn down a surgery appointment for August because she could not pay the $100,000 bill.
“I forget what it’s like to wake up pain free,” 35-year-old Sarah Holden told Yahoo7.
“My quality of life is slowly going. I don’t make plans anymore, I don’t make arrangements. Sometimes I can’t care for the children. I’m in pain 24/7.”
Ms Holden, from Newcastle, was diagnosed with a brain tumour in January after months of migraines, nausea and vomiting.
Her GP sent her for a MRI scan, which confirmed that she had a pineal cystic brain tumour which was about the size of a grape, at 10 by 11 millimetres.
The rare and slow growing brain tumour causes constant headaches, migraine-like pain, head pressure, insomnia, hearing loss and blurry vision, and is growing in size.
“I’m getting new symptoms regularly. I had a TIA [transient ischaemic attack] stroke two weeks ago,” she said.
“It’s like a short stroke, [with] stroke-like symptoms,” she said.
“I couldn’t speak properly, I couldn’t say the words that I wanted to say that I was thinking. I had a face drop, l couldn’t put four words together. It’s what they call a suspected TIA stroke,” Ms Holden said.
At times, her symptoms escalate and she relies on her friends and family to care for herself and her four daughters, aged between 4 and 15.
“The flare-ups are excruciating, that is when I can’t even care for myself. I can’t move, I can’t speak,” she said.
“I have support here, I have family, I have friends her who come in. They cook, they take the kids to their house, they get them ready for school, they drive me to the doctors, call an ambulance when I need it,” she said.
Quest to raise $100,000 for surgery
In May, Ms Holden met with renowned neurosurgeon Dr Charlie Teo at the Prince of Wales Private Hospital in Sydney.
Dr Teo offered her a last chance for survival after multiple specialists told Ms Holden that the tumour was inoperable or asymptomatic.
“There is no neurosurgeon that can do it in a public hospital,” she said.
“Dr Teo was recommended for the surgery, because he is the only one in Australia that can perform the surgery,”
“Dr Teo has done a hundred of the surgeries on the pineal cystic tumours,”
“He has had a 100 per cent success rate,” she said.
Ms Holden aims to raise the $100,000 by September. She has a Go Fund Me page, which has raised about $5000 to date.
She is also holding a fundraising event at Fitzy’s Hotel in Loganholme, Queensland from 6.30 pm on August 11. Tickets are $60 and include dinner, music and a chance to win a major door prize.
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“I never thought I’d be in a position where I had to open up my life to the world. I never thought I’d be in a position to have to ask people for money,” she said.
Ms Holden aims to raise the money for surgery by September so that she can return to health.
“Just to be able to wake up one morning and say, I’m not in pain today. That would be beyond words,” she said.
“I hope that there’s going to be some more awareness raised for this, so people don’t have to go through what I and the people that are going through it.”
