Mystery woman makes £100k donation towards fundraiser for Aberdeen teen’s rare brain condition surgery
A woman with a BIG HEART has donated £100,000 to a fundraiser to help a teenager with a rare brain condition undergo surgery.
Jack Dow, 18, and his family are overwhelmed by the stunning donation.
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The Aberdeen boy has an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) that affected his vision and caused painful migraines that were so debilitating he eventually became bedridden.
The brain condition is a tangle of underdeveloped blood vessels connecting arteries to veins and bypassing capillaries that deliver oxygenated blood to tissues.
Jack’s father Willie, 45, started a GoFundMe page earlier this month in a desperate effort to raise £147,000 for life-changing surgeries across the US.
On Tuesday, a woman from southern England reached out to the family and made an offline donation of £100,000, exceeding her fundraising goal.
The widow, who wishes to remain anonymous, was left money by her late husband who wanted it to be used to help people.
A stunned Willie told The Scottish Sun: “It’s a lot of money. It just came out of the blue.
“She emailed us and told me to contact her. She said she felt our cause and wanted to help us.
“At first I thought it might be a scam, but it worked out fine. It was very kind of her – she has a heart of gold.
“Jack is overjoyed. He’s absolutely thrilled.
“This is where everything starts for Jack. It’s important that he has surgery and hopefully everything goes well.”
Willie figured it would take years, not weeks, to raise the funds his son needed for a complex procedure at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Fla., to remove the AVM.
The father-of-two hopes they’ll fly across the pond in the summer for surgery to remove the bulk of the blood vessels.
So far £192,810 has been raised with the operation costing £147,000 and a whopping 30 per cent of the surgeon’s fee.
Hospitalization is costing £6,450 a day and while Jack recovers there will be rehabilitation costs which cost £11,000 a day.
Donations will also help cover accommodation and transatlantic flights.
Willie also revealed the family hopes to meet up with the woman who donated the £100,000 once Jack has recovered and the remaining money will be given to AVM Awareness Charity and Macmillan Cancer Support Aberdeen.
The offshore worker said: “We never thought we’d be able to raise the money so quickly. The large donation shocked the whole family.
“She is a lovely woman. She is an angel.
“There are so many good people out there. It’s incredible.”
Jack received the devastating diagnosis after a CT scan in July last year and is on highly effective medication to ease the severe pain.
The uniformed service student still suffers from a nagging headache, and three neurosurgeons said it was a very high risk to perform surgery because the AVM was so deep.
But Willie has done his own research and tracked down a specialist who thinks he can successfully remove it.
Brain AVMs are rare, occurring in less than 1 percent of the population.
Symptoms include seizures, headaches, speech problems, and vision problems.
Donations for the fundraiser can be made here.
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