Help Us Keep Maya Jhonson Safe

My name is Oliver Jhonson, and I’m Maya Jhonson’s dad.

Maya is 13 years old and has been fighting high-risk neuroblastoma since she was 3.

After years of treatment, she was blessed with almost five years in remission. It was a precious time for our family. But in 2023, the cancer came back.

Since then, our lives have once again been filled with hospitals, scans, treatments, and uncertainty.

Last year, during an experimental CAR-T cell therapy treatment, Maya suffered a severe brain injury. She was unresponsive for weeks, and for a long time we didn’t know if we would ever hear her voice again.

But she fought.

After months in hospital, she came home and even learned to speak again.

Today, Maya is profoundly disabled and depends on us for her daily care.

But she is still our Maya — funny, full of opinions, imagination, and songs she loves to sing.

Recently, we received more devastating news: the cancer has progressed again and has spread to her liver and bones.

She is now facing chemotherapy once more.

We don’t know how much time we have. What we do know is that we want that time to be filled with comfort, safety, and love.

I am now Maya’s full-time carer, and my wife has also had to reduce her working hours to help care for her.

Our income has gone down while our expenses have continued to rise.

We have costs for hospital travel, equipment, household bills, disability-related expenses, and a mortgage that is becoming harder and harder to afford.

We are asking for help so we can keep our home, cover our basic expenses, and care for Maya over the coming months without constantly fearing that we may lose the place where she feels safest.

As her dad, there are many things I cannot control.

I cannot take the cancer away from her.

But I can try to make sure she is comfortable, surrounded by her family, and at home.

That is all we want right now.

If you are able to contribute, any amount will make a difference to our family.

And if you cannot donate, simply sharing Maya’s story would mean so much to us.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about our daughter and our story.

With love,

Oliver Jhonson
Maya’s dad