Meagan Clark* is a university lecturer, married, with two kids – all the usual stuff – and considers herself incredibly privileged. But despite her apparent advantages in life, she still struggled with the blows dealt to her and her family during her cancer treatment.

Meagan’s story

About 5 or 6 years ago, I was diagnosed with blood cancer and went through a year of treatment with chemo and radiation therapy. Things were looking good, until I relapsed last year. This time, my treatment included chemotherapy and an allogeneic bone marrow transplant (BMT). 

The BMT was the toughest part of my journey. I faced some nasty post-transplant complications that kept me in hospital for four months, dealing with serious infections and soaring temperatures.

Harder than anything I’ve ever been through

My bone marrow transplant was harder than anything I’ve ever been through before. Being in hospital for such a long time was tough. After so many months of being isolated in the hospital, I felt like my mind had shut down. I’m usually a thinker, and a planner. I like to look to the future. But when I was in hospital, I just drew inward. I lost all ability to think beyond the here and now. 

The transplant ward was so bland and lifeless. There’s nothing living or moving apart from the staff. I found myself looking for movement… for anything that was alive and moving. I couldn’t have a bunch of flowers or a potted plant because of the infection risks they bring. There was no garden to look at. Well, there was a garden, but it was plastic, so nothing was alive and moving there! 

It was really a difficult time. And it wasn’t just hard on me – it was tough on my husband and family too. As the patient, I was able to hunker down and just be the patient. I could fall in a heap, go to sleep, or draw inside myself like I did. But for my husband, it was much harder.  He had to juggle both worlds: the hospital and the outside world of home and work. I feel that he had the much harder run of things as my carer, having to carry on and deal with it all. 

Financially it was a struggle too 

Financially it was a struggle too. I’d used up all my long service leave and most of my sick leave, holidays, carers leave… whatever kind of leave you have, I’d used it up during my first round of treatment, so that had also added to the extra financial strain on the family.  

My illness was unexpected and the treatment  happened so quickly, so there was no time to stop and prepare our finances. I just had to  get in and get treatment happening. There was no  spare capacity – not time or mental space – to get in and work out how we were going to survive financially. I was solely focused on surviving the illness. 

Prior to my illness I worked full time. We are a two-income family, so we were in a good financial position compared to a lot of people, but even so all our money went to paying for housing and putting the kids through school. So even for us with our two jobs, there was not a lot left over at the end of each month.  

With one of us out of work, and the additional costs of medical treatments, it didn’t take long for things to fall apart financially. Having medical complications like I did only made things worse. 

It was all the little financial burdens that added up and caused the most hardship. Things that under normal circumstances are neither here nor there… the cost of getting to an appointment, or paying for parking at the hospital, or extra medications. Things that are so small it makes it hard to ask for help with them. When it’s just a one-off, it’s not a big deal, but when it goes on for months and years like it did with my bone marrow transplant, it takes a toll. 

We got by with help from Arrow

Despite all of this, I know how fortunate I am. We live in a lucky country and if I lived in another country, I may not have had the luxury of the government helping to pay the costs of being in hospital, or the generous pay and conditions that I have in my work. We have also been incredibly lucky to receive help from Arrow. That support made a huge difference to us. 

Arrow helped us with those small, everyday costs that add up over time. Things like petrol vouchers and paying for parking at the hospital. It doesn’t sound like much, but my husband was doing so much extra driving getting the kids where they needed to be, getting himself to work, and visiting me in hospital. Arrow’s help made it possible for us to get by.  

The process of accessing help from Arrow was so simple. It is set up so that it is not another burden you have to deal with. It was all so easy, and when you’re dealing with all the complexities of a bone marrow transplant it’s a gift to have something go so smoothly.  

What Arrow does is amazing

It wasn’t just me that benefited from Arrow’s support, my family did too. It was lovely to see the effect on my family.  I’m the one who usually does all the cooking in our family, but while I was in hospital and my husband was so busy with everything, the kids had to learn to manage themselves a bit more. It was so good to know that we could stock the pantry with food that they could manage to prepare on their own. My son is now pretty good with pasta! He would get the pasta on, knowing that there was always something in the pantry he could put with it. It was such a comfort, knowing there was food on the table even though I wasn’t there. 

It was a really lovely feeling too, knowing that someone actually cares for us and our family. Someone beyond our immediate family. It was reassuring to know that there are strangers out there who have maybe been through this themselves, who get what it’s like and understand what you need, and who are prepared to do something about it by donating to Arrow.  

What Arrow does is amazing. We wouldn’t have made it through without their support. 

Please, thank your supporters and donors for me. It’s made a real difference to us! 

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Donate today and help us support more bone marrow transplant patients like Meagan.

*Name changed for privacy reasons