Arrow Foundation

Thank you for taking on the Dry July challenge and for choosing to support Arrow Bone Marrow Transplant Foundation in our very first year! We are delighted to announce that with your help we raised an astounding $45,729 for people with blood cancer through the Arrow Patient Support Program. We are extremely grateful for your fundraising efforts and dedication.

Arrow’s Patient Support Program empowers our patients with information, supports their mental health and provides financial assistance for essential groceries, utility bills and additional travel and accommodation expenses incurred during treatment.

Your incredible support and fundraising through the Dry July 2024 campaign, will help us to assist an additional 60 patients, their carers and their families and will make a huge impact on many lives.

A bone marrow or stem cell transplant is a risky and lengthy medical procedure which requires extended periods of time in hospital and causes significant financial hardship to patients and their families. The treatment is also mentally tough, faced with the potential life-threatening complications of treatment, and in some cases the anxiety of not finding a matched donor.

These patients need financial and emotional support throughout their difficult journey so they can focus on what is most important – their treatment and recovery. And because of you we can make that possible.

“No words can express how thankful and grateful we are that Arrow can help us with our electricity bill. Thanks again for your continuous support.”

On behalf of the team at Arrow, our board members and all the people that we support, we would like to thank you for your support and contribution to making a positive difference in the lives of people who have received a bone marrow or stem cell transplant.

Arrow would like to say a HUGE thank you to everyone fundraising for us this year! We are absolutely blown away at the amount raised so far especially being our first year taking part in Dry July. This support will really help us make an impact in the lives of people receiving a bone marrow transplant and their families and carers. So THANK YOU!! If you want to see more about the work we do and the impact your Dry July fundraising is having, please join us on our social media networks via Instagram and Facebook. 

I’m Janna, and I’m the Programs Officer for Arrow.

I look after our patient support program that helps bone marrow transplant patients and their families manage all the extra costs they have to juggle during treatment. This could be providing a grocery or petrol gift card, paying a household bill, or help covering the cost of temporary accommodation while they are away from home for treatment.

The patients we help are really unwell. Many of them are facing blood cancer, and it’s a tough disease to beat. People often get a diagnosis one day and can sometimes be in hospital starting treatment the next. It’s a huge and sudden disruption to their lives that no one is ever prepared for. Your whole life is turned on its head, and you don’t really know for how long.

Bone marrow transplants are amazing and life-saving, but they’re also pretty tough to get through. Treatment can take many months, and recovery sometimes longer. Patients need to be in or near a hospital for most of that time. Transplant recipients are really vulnerable to infection for a good while after transplant, and they can get really sick really quickly. They need a carer with them pretty much the whole time.

Not every hospital is a bone marrow transplant centre, so that means that families often have to leave home to receive treatment. For families that are from regional centres they have to either uproot the whole family to a bigger town for treatment, or if it is Mum or Dad that is sick, sometimes both parents have to go and find someone else to stay at home and look after the kids. I often hear of situations like that where the family is effectively running two households and neither parent is able to work. Finances are really strained.

It is these families with kids that really hit home to me in my job. As a mum myself, that could so easily be me in that situation. It makes me realise how lucky I am to have everyone in my family healthy.

I love my job. It is so rewarding. It is super busy. We get a lot of requests. Last year I processed over 700 requests for help. But I know that behind every single one of the applications, there is a family that is it at their most vulnerable and it is great to know that my job makes a difference to their lives.