After experiencing chronic back pain and tingling in her toes—sensations that gradually spread to her knees and waist—Aamu suddenly lost feeling in her legs. She was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

Aamu was 37 years old and shocked to be receiving a blood cancer diagnosis. Chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and an autologous bone marrow transplant followed.

“Gruelling,” is how Aamu describes that time in her life, and not just the treatment itself, but the long-term impact it has had on her family.

“I was off work for 10 months, but we still had to run a household and keep our two kids moving along and happy despite everything that was going on. And we still had to pay all the bills without the usual income coming in. It’s a lot to hold it all together.”

After a long recovery, just as life was beginning to feel normal again, Aamu's pain returned. She required additional chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and a second transplant.

Financial worries only added to the stress—from covering daily living expenses to the extra costs of traveling to hospital appointments and medical tests.

“I don’t know how we got through it,” Aamu says. “You have two options. You can fall in a heap, or you can make it work. I chose to just make it work. People think you just have your transplant and then everything goes back to normal, but it doesn’t. There are ongoing checks and tests and maintenance treatments month in and month out, and all that takes a lot of time and money. It’s not easy. But the help we received from Arrow really made a difference. It takes a village when your whole world comes crashing down around you, and Arrow was part of that village for us.”