Alana Smale

Our daughter, Alana Smale, desperately needs your help.

Alana’s long battle with liver disease PSC, or Primary Sclerosing Cholangitus, has come to a critical point. She is now in liver failure and needs a transplant to survive. We’re asking family and friends to join us in fundraising for the nonprofit “Help Hope Live” to help with critical expenses we will face immediately after surgery, including the cost of lodging near the transplant center of Cleveland Clinic, and also the expenses of alive donor, someone who has willingly stepped up to save her life. Though their stay is not lengthy,
there are costs they will have as well.

Alana is required to stay close by for at least six weeks following discharge from the hospital. Her stay in hospital, the Cleveland Clinic, may be weeks as well.

Alana has always had a sweet spirit despite her chronic health condition. PSC is a progressive disease that even in stable times, has symptoms that greatly reduce her ability to participate in her favorite activities. She once worked a small job at the Girl Scout office and volunteered at the 2,d Harvest Food
Pantry of Northern Ohio. The disease is progressive. Through this suffering as well as the challenges people like her with Down Syndrome deal with, Alana wears a smile and says “l’m ok mom”.

Her daily goals have always been to help others, share her artwork and notes, and give hugs. Alana’s disease seemed to be suppressed for a couple years after her original diagnosis is2017, and her routine blood labs showed her liver was functional. But in the fall of 2021, despite numerous procedures and medications, she rapidly began to worsen. At this time, her liver is functioning very little and one entire side now has cirrohsis and is blocked. Alana needs help now.

Cleveland Clinic feels she is a good candidate for the transplant and without it she will not survive.

Although Alana has health coverage for much of the cost of her life-saving medicines and transplant to come, there will be some costs that it will not cover. She will need anti-rejection medicines for the rest of her life, ongoing treatments and costly in hospital testing and stays to manage her health.

You can help make a difference to her and people like her with disabilities. As far as we or anyone in the transplant team knows, Alana may be the first person with Down Syndrome to receive a liver transplant. This is very hopeful and encouraging to others with disabilities throughout the world. They
are a valuable part of society and enrich us all with their uniqueness. Please help us save our daughter and we will be forever grateful.
May God bless you for giving.

Our family are raising money for the nonprofit Help Hope Live in honor of Alana Smale to fund uninsured medical expenses associated with transplantation.

We have chosen to fundraise for Help Hope Live in part because Help Hope Live assures fiscal accountability of funds raised and tax deductibility for contributors. Contributors can be sure donations will be used to pay or reimburse medical and related expenses. To make a tax-deductible donation to this fundraising campaign, click on the Give button. Please share Alan’s page with your community.

For more information, please contact Help Hope Live at 800.642.8399.

Thank you for your support!