Nancy* as she set up a Christmas tree during her
interview with The Times in December. Photo:
Matthew Mirabelli

Nancy*, the mother-of-three who is battling cancer and poverty, is overwhelmed at how people she has never met are helping her by providing food, clothes and furniture for her family.

“People who don’t even know who I am started sending clothes, toys and things that my kids needed. I can’t thank you enough for all this,” the 34-year-old wrote.

Help for Nancy poured in after The Times published her story on Christmas Eve.

Nancy’s health problems started in 2000, when her eldest daughter was a toddler. She started forgetting a lot of things and it eventually emerged she had a brain tumour, which was removed surgically.

After that she started suffering from epileptic fits but was clear from the cancer.

The stress of the illness led to a separation from her husband. But she moved on with her life, starting a new relationship and having another baby.

In 2009 another tumour was found and she started radiotherapy, which seemed to work. She got pregnant again, but her seizures increased, leading to an early birth.

It was soon clear the fits were due to another tumour on her pituitary gland, which controls hormone function. She is currently undergoing chemotherapy.

Due to her ill health Nancy and her family recently moved across the road from her parents’ house.

The Millennium Chapel, led by Fr Saviour Grima, has been helping the family with basic needs and has helped furnish her apartment.

When she was 10, her parents were involved in a traffic accident and her mother suffered permanent brain damage and lost her ability to walk.

Her mother is now house-bound and moves around the dark, narrow government apartment on a desk chair on wheels.

A wheelchair has since been donated to her mother and someone offered to help convert the overgrown yard at her parents’ house into an outdoor area her mother can enjoy.

People also donated bunk beds so that Nancy can convert a small room at her parents’ house into a bedroom for her children to stay in when she is too weak to look after them.

A contractor has offered to fix a dangerous balcony at Nancy’s house as well as the damaged bathroom ceiling at her parents’ house.

Others donated curtains to make Nancy’s home warmer as well as food and clothes for the children.

In a letter addressed to Fr Saviour, but which she extended to all who helped her, she wrote: “They say that to trust is to take the first step even when you don’t see what can be… every day is a new beginning, forget about what might be and look for tomorrow with a smile.”

Fr Saviour said that, since The Times published Nancy’s story, he had received many letters from Malta and overseas with offers to help her.

“This woman deserves all this. Anything she was donated that was extra, she gave to someone who needs it more than her,” he said.

*Name and details have been changed to protect the children’s identity.