Could you please help us support a young mother and family during her long recovery from cancer?

Ruby Cruz is the mother of two beautiful young children and the wife of Sam. In October 2016, she went to the GP to investigate a worrying lump and was very quickly fighting for her life.

Ruby was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Lympho-Leukaemia, a complex form of blood cancer, and she needed a stem cell transplant to save her life. Her Latin American heritage made this very hard - people with non-Northern-European heritage have only a 20% chance of finding a non-related donor. After an exhaustive search, her life saver was found in Brazil and the transplant took place this summer.

But transplant is far from the end of the story - Ruby has been in and out of hospital throughout this time. This means she’s been separated from her beautiful kids and husband over and over. After a series of mystery fevers, she’s also been diagnosed with Graft versus Host disease in her gut. Over half of unrelated-donor recipients get this - so she’s started on steroids and is hopeful for the future.

The biggest stress for her at the moment is worry about how the family will deal with finances. Ruby’s sick pay will end in January and they’re concerned. Sam is working but they have a mortgage and bills to pay. Ruby and Sam have had fantastic support from her mother - who came all the way from Australia to help them. Being here rather than in Oz has meant she has lost her pension and she has no income in the UK though she still has to pay her mortgage there. Her practical and emotional support has been priceless, especially with the children, but the family now have to find a way to help her to be able to stay.

This lovely and loving family really need our help to enable Ruby to focus on her recovery in the next few months. Please consider donating a little to help support them.

If you can't give money at this time then please consider donating blood through the NHS at www.blood.co.uk, supporting Anthony Nolan's Who Cares campaign which aims to improve aftercare for stem cell transplant paitents (www.anthonynolan.org) or indeed signing up to be a potential life saver yourself at www.dkms.org.uk. It also really helps us if you share this page to encourage others to help if they can.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this!