Effie (19) has one year to live: To fulfill her last wish, the Dutch need help | abroad

The Dutch started crowdfunding To make her last wish come true. She had 25,000 euros in mind. And 40,000 euros have already been collected in one day. The price of the counter is now around 54,000 euros. A complete surprise for Evi and her family.

When Evie was 14, she developed bone cancer with metastases in her lungs. Doctors gave her little chance. The only option was chemotherapy. In an interview with AD.nl, Evi looks back at that period she calls “heavy pussy”. “I had absolutely no energy, couldn’t do anything myself. I couldn’t eat because I was constantly nauseous and I was in the hospital most of the time.”

The tumor was in her right arm. She underwent surgery and had her bones replaced with a titanium prosthesis. “It was a terrible year. When I was finally allowed to go home, I had to rehab for another year.” It didn’t stop there, because it turned out to be bacteria on her arm. Once again she had surgery, again she had to rehab.

With that, the storage seemed to be over and she was back in school. She received her diploma in high school and began studying in Utrecht. Nice study, with nice people: there seems to be nothing in the air. She even had to go to the hospital for a check-up a few months ago. This is where it turned out to be wrong. It turned out that the metastases in her lungs were active again, and they were so active that they had also spread. There is no chance of a cure.

Young Evi was given two choices: go through the entire chemotherapy process and rehab again, or not. She chose the latter. “With chemotherapy, there’s a chance it might extend my life. But I chose the quality of life and now I’m getting the best out of it. That means she has less than a year to live.” So I had to think about exactly what I wanted with the time left.

Her stepfather, Joan van Emerlot, says Evie is currently in the hospital with complications. The past few months have been very difficult for the family, and also because other family matters have been playing a role. “When Evi bravely decided not to undergo any further treatments, we were very shocked. It had been hanging over your head for years like the sword of Damocles, but if these metastases became really active…” Shock and disbelief soon gave way to the question: “What can I do?” also? “

Joanne, Evie, and her mother sat at the table to discuss how and what. We asked her: What do you want to do? I thought about skydiving, but then we asked her if she didn’t want to take a nice ride. We really encouraged her to think big.”

To raise money for that beautiful trip, the help of friends and family was called upon. They hoped to raise enough funds through crowdfunding to realize Evie’s dream. Cousin Joanne made a video for Evie, in which she tells her story on a crowdfunding page. “In the video you really see her for who she is. A very positive emotional woman. She is good at accepting and adapting to things. She has a clear purpose in her mind.”

The big ride that Evi talked about in her video breaks down into several smaller rides. She goes to North America for a few weeks, then comes home to catch her breath and get tests in the hospital, then travels again. Joanne: “She wanted to travel alone, but we want her to have a buddy. Now there’s enough money for that and it reassures us a lot too. Let’s say you’re alone in Yosemite and you’re fine…”

The hope is that complications and hospitalization won’t hinder her too often. In fact, Evie was already traveling, but the trip to New York, which she would take with her mother, was postponed to June. “This is really a wish for these two.”