Friends help to raise $500,000 on social media to beat blood cancer

A West Auckland man and his friends are using social media to raise $500,000 for treatment to help him beat stage four blood cancer.

Cancer patient Michael Walters and his friends are posting daily to TikTok and Instagram to raise money for treatment overseas.

Michael needs CAR T-cell therapy which is available overseas and is not funded in New Zealand.

“It’s a newer cancer treatment . . . and it takes more than 20 years for a new treatment to become the new standard and [be funded],” Michael says.

Supportive care manager for Cancer Society Auckland Northland Michelle Gundersen-Reid said they are aware people use social media to share their experiences.

“A cancer diagnosis can bring significant financial and emotional pressure, including travel costs, loss of income, and accessing treatment away from home.”

Michael says he knew social media would bring attention to his Givealittle appeal.

“I just know if we want to blow it up and stuff, you want to post every day on social media,” he says.

Michael’s friend Dominic Tekori says posting daily was another way to support his friend.

“I think this is our way of playing our part and being able to get Michael the treatment he needs,” he says.

When Michael’s friend Callum Sao found out how much was needed for treatment, he asked himself what they were going to do to overcome it.

“I think it’s that discipline to help Michael get better. That’s what keeps us going,” he says.

The posts range from daily life to inspirational content.

Michael says he has been overwhelmed by the support online, receiving 9000 comments on one of the videos and several of messages.

“Instead of just wishing me well, people have actually been like, ‘I want to help, what can I do?’ . . . and they’re just strangers, they don’t know me at all,” he says.

He says he will donate the money to Blood Cancer NZ and other Givealittle pages if he does not get the treatment.

Michael says he had a lot of symptoms looking back, but it was a pain on his shoulder and chest that pushed him to go to his GP.

“The next week that pain came back and it stayed for a good three or four days . . . finally I was like, I have to go because it was just really bad,” he says.

When doctors found a shadow in Michael’s X-ray, Michael went in for a CT and they found a tumour on his chest.

A biopsy showed that it was lymphoma.

“Everything just happened so fast. We didn’t even really cry that much or anything . . . we didn’t know what was happening,” he says.

Dominic says this journey has taught him a lot of compassion.

“There’ll be times where I’ll take Mikey to appointments . . . [I understood] this isn’t an everyday appointment. This is an appointment where [his] life is on the line,” he says.

Callum says it taught him to appreciate the small things.

“To appreciate being able to go to the gym or to do the basic things in life that unfortunately were stripped away from Michael . . . even being able to walk around the house, Michael could barely even do that at some point,” he says.

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