The Flagstone Community has rallied to support one of their own in Claire Wilkinson who is suffering from an extremely rare disease.
The one in a million disease called Acanthamoeba Keratitis first struck the young mother in 2008 and has led to a nightmarish, almost eight year medical journey, and led to a condition which causes intense facial pain.
The community has raised $1000 to help her towards the $11,000 she requires to get to the London so that she can have imaging completed on her brain.
Ms Wilkinson said dealing with the disease which is caused by a parasite which can live in water getting into an eye is a constant battle.
“This parasite gets into the eye and it eats the eye….it’s eaten my optic nerve and the nerve around the actual eye, that led to a condition called trigeminal neuralgia and that is a severe pain in the face,” she said.
“It’s a constant pain, it feels like your getting stabbed, like there is needles, it’s one of the most intense pains I’ve ever had in my life.
“That entails me having my 28 tablets a day and my four injections a day to get through.
“I’ve had 16 surgeries, one including a corneal transplant, but unfortunately I never regained the sight in my left eye, then the very last surgery was brain surgery to try and fix the pain in the face.
“The face is made up of the T1, the T2 and T3 nerve, they were trying to compress the T1 nerve but unfortunately it wasn’t able to be done.
“I came out of theatre and I remember waking up briefly in recovery, and I recall something wasn’t right and the next thing I was in ICU, obviously you go there anyway from brain surgery, I was in ICU and I’d had a stroke, that was 2012,”
“And it’s all from that parasite.”
Flagstone Community Association’s Bob Wiley said the entire community helped raise the $1000.
“It’s not just the FCA, its FCA, Kathy Smith from Chicks Conquering Cancer have held a fundraiser, but it’s not just us it’s been the whole Flagstone community,” he said.
“Claire is very well respected in the community and it’s really stuffed her life up.”
Ms Wilkinson’s next hope is potentially life changing surgery, but before that surgery can be undertaken by she needs to get to the UK to undergo special imaging to see whether the surgery is even possible.
“The problem is now they have to do a particular imaging of the eye and a test on the eye and we don’t have the equipment in Australia,” she said.
Ms Wilkinson said she is grateful for the continued support of the Flagstone community.
"We’ve just got an awesome community,” she said.
Ms Wilkinson has set up a gofundme campaign to help get to London to undergo the testing she requires and you can donate here.
