Sascha Wil­son

De­spite a jump in do­na­tions since her sto­ry was aired last week­end, can­cer pa­tient Zelia Castel­lo still does not have enough funds for her bone mar­row trans­plant in In­dia.

As re­sult of this and ef­forts to se­cure their VISAs, her de­par­ture date, orig­i­nal­ly card­ed for Sep­tem­ber 5, has been pushed back.

In an in­ter­view last week, Castel­lo said, “As of Tues­day, I would have got­ten an av­er­age around $30,000 more (in her bank ac­count). Go­FundMe, I got about $2,200. That is the most that I’ve got­ten in such a short space of time since the Go­FundMe was cre­at­ed.”

Di­ag­nosed with Hodgkin’s Lym­phoma in Jan­u­ary 2021, Castel­lo, a mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cer, needs US$200,000 for her treat­ment in In­dia.

Recog­nis­ing her strug­gles in rais­ing the funds, the hos­pi­tal has agreed to do the bone mar­row with a down­pay­ment of US$15,000.

De­spite her fund-rais­ing ac­tiv­i­ties and ap­peals for do­na­tions, Castel­lo, at an emer­gency press con­fer­ence last week­end, not­ed that she had on­ly raised US$7,000.

Thank­ing every­one who re­spond­ed to her ap­peal ei­ther with fi­nan­cial, emo­tion­al or spir­i­tu­al sup­port, she said, “I ap­pre­ci­ate every­body who would have reached out and still there are per­sons who may not have reached out and I know they’re pray­ing for me, so I want to say thanks to them as well.”

She not­ed that last week made it a month since her last chemother­a­py and she has not been feel­ing well.

“Ex­haust­ed, drained, I get lit­tle bad feel­ings in be­tween. Late­ly, I start­ed to get a lot of nau­seous­ness, pains about my body. It com­ing back grad­u­al­ly. When I get up on a morn­ing, I get up with my hand like if some­body shock­ing it, like some­body pound­ing it up. I don’t know how to re­al­ly ex­plain it but I can’t close in my hand.”

The hos­pi­tal of­fi­cials in In­dia, how­ev­er, are in touch with her.

“Just this morn­ing I was on a phone call with them. The ques­tion al­ways asked is when you com­ing across. They does call to find out how I feel­ing, how I go­ing, if I hav­ing any side ef­fects, any pain they does just keep abreast with what is go­ing on with me, bear­ing in mind that I’m not on chemother­a­py at the mo­ment, so they’re do­ing a lot of check-ups.”

She can be con­tact­ed at 329-1688 or do­nate to Zelia Chris­tiana Castel­lo First Cit­i­zens Bank ac­count num­ber 2283611. To con­tribute go to the web­site https://go­fund.me/40f4d87e.