Wellspring
Amira's hospital room has a big window, and taped to the glass is a row of kites she has drawn — one for every month since her diagnosis. She is seven. She will tell you, very seriously, that she draws them "so I can see what up there looks like." Her little brother thinks they should have longer strings. She concedes the point, redoes the string, and signs the corner like an artist.
Before any of this, Amira was the fastest girl in her class and the undisputed queen of the playground. The bruises came first — small, unexplained, easy to dismiss. Then the fevers that wouldn't break, then the tiredness that turned into naps, then into days.
The day everything changed
In March of last year, after three weeks of tests her parents still can't talk about calmly, a doctor sat them down and explained that Amira's bone marrow — the factory inside her bones that makes blood — had all but stopped working. The words for it are bone marrow failure. The treatment her team recommends is a transplant: replace the factory, rebuild her blood, give her body back.
Her mother remembers asking a single question: how much. She remembers the answer less as a number than as a wall.
What the doctors said
Medically, Amira's path is unusually clear. Her transfusions keep her stable, a matching donor has been found, and her surgical team has done this operation hundreds of times. What they cannot schedule is the funding.
Medically, her path is clear. Financially, it's a wall — and walls move when enough people push.
A member of Amira's transplant team
A transplant like Amira's is not one bill but a hundred of them arriving in sequence: the search and matching, the procedure itself, the hundred days of protective isolation that follow while her new marrow learns its job, the medications, the blood products, the follow-ups. Each one is non-negotiable. Together they come to $250,000.
What her family has done
Her parents have sold what can be sold and borrowed what can be borrowed. Her father has taken night shifts; her mother has not been away from the hospital for more than a weekend in fourteen months. People keep asking how they stay hopeful.
Amira sets the tone. She still laughs louder than the machines.
Amira's mother
What happens next
Wellspring has verified Amira's treatment plan directly with her hospital and has committed to pay every provider directly — no money passes through private hands. When the fund completes, her transplant can be scheduled within weeks. The transfusions are holding her steady, but they are a bridge, not a destination.
She is seven, and she is waiting. Her kites are up to fourteen.
Where the money goes
What $250,000 actually covers.
Estimates confirmed with Amira's care team. Any funds raised beyond her verified costs are ring-fenced for the next child on our waiting list.
Your questions