The very next day after our fundraising ball last year, Trustees Matt and Ella were at CRFC matchday lunch when they heard from Natalie, a mum from Chartham, as she made a heartfelt and emotional plea for support from the room for her beautiful daughter Millie, who had been struck down with a rare neurological illness at the age of 17.
Natalie and her family had been on a huge fundraising campaign for the past 6 months to raise over £100k as the funds they desperately needed to get Millie to the USA as the only place that presented some form of hope to them by offering the treatment and rehabilitation programme that could potentially help her.
Overnight, Millie went from being a healthy, happy teenager studying her A ‘Levels and looking to her next adventure when she was incapacitated with the most excruciating pain. Within 24 hours Millie’s body started to shut down and she lost the use of all four limbs, her taste and touch. Diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), a poorly understood condition which is a progressive disease of the Sympathetic Nervous System, quite simply Millie was experiencing “the most painful disease to all humanity” dubbed ‘The Suicide Disease’ because of the unbearable pain it leaves its sufferers in, wishing they would die to escape the pain. Since Millie’s diagnosis she has also been diagnosed with Small Fibre Neuropathy, Fibromyalgia, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, Aquagenic Urticaria, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome and PTSD.
Hearing from Natalie and the heartbreaking truth her and her family faced, the Trustees knew they had to step in and help Millie and unanimously agreed to make a significant donation to meet the gap in the remaining monies needed to get her to America. Her treatment is ongoing, it tragically may not work, but through the money we raised the night before we knew we could at least offer a glimmer of hope to a family immersed in the most unimaginable of situations. Because, at Donations with a Difference, that is what we do, we help those who need us, and we continue to hope and pray for Millie.
