Help Hannah's Hands Continue To Heal Others

Hello everyone,

My name is Hannah, I am 25 and I created a balm that saved my face from a flesh eating bacteria.

I need your help so I can keep helping others.

My journey so far has been amazing and every day, regardless of how good or bad things get, I am excited to be alive.

My Saving product has enabled me to create a business and I have helped thousands of kiwis manage skin conditions from eczema to acne, psoriasis to dermatitis and my most recent testimonials are from five different individuals who HAD skin cancers that have now dissapeared, the only difference being the introduction of my hydrating facial nectar to thier everyday routine !

The feedback speaks for itself and the reviews and testimonials still keep amazing me!

My heart is 100% in this and I have so many loyal and happy customers.

During the 18 months I battled my skin infection (which is immune to antibiotics now and I am a carrier of it, it is very important that I take care of my health) I had nearly no support, I looked like Freddy Kruegar, I was so sad, sick and lonely. If I wasnt a mother, I don't think I would've had the inner strength to keep going.

I have a huge understanding of how something as simple as imperfected skin can have an effect on our mental and emotional wellbeing and the way we view ourselves physically and mentally. It's a cycle that is very hard to get out of.

I have appeared on The Cafe on TV3 and also in the Woman's Day. Below I have copied and pasted my article so you have a better understanding of who I am and why I am so passionate about what I do.

At the bottom of this page I will explain why I need your help.

THE ARTICLE:

Woman's Day

Hannah saved her skin with a homemade balm

It was a regular day of helping a friend with her gardening, but the generous act completely changed Hannah Cadwallader’s life. While digging through dirt, the Tauranga woman came into contact with some cat droppings, which led to a terrifying flesh-eating disease.

“At first, I just thought I was having acne breakouts,” Hannah tells Woman’s Day.

But a month later, in late 2013, doctors diagnosed the single mum with a vicious staph infection that would slowly start to eat away at her face.

“For 18 months, I pretty much battled against half my face being eaten off,” the 25-year-old says. “Medical staff gave me creams, bleach baths twice a week, surgical body washes and antibiotics, but nothing seemed to work.”

While picking up her two kids, Liam, eight, and Madalin, five, from school, Hannah would get called “pizza face”. She recalls, “Kids would start crying and I would joke, ‘If you don’t eat your veges, you will end up like this!’ But the comments took their toll and depression kicked in.”

And things only got worse when Hannah, who was then unemployed, applied for a food grant from Work and Income. Fighting back tears, she recalls, “The case manager referred me to drug and alcohol rehab because they thought I was a crack head. I was in an ugly place and I needed a change.”

With financial help from her mother, Hannah moved to Taupo in early 2014 to be closer to her sister Shoshanna. It was there that she went to see a dermatologist, who told her the infection had become so bad that it would have to be removed from her face.

“Growing up, I had great skin. I didn’t realise how gorgeous I was until this happened,” says Hannah. “I was 23 when he told me that and I remember going home in tears, thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve battled with this for 18 months and now they are going to chop a part of my face off!’”

The final straw came when Hannah’s dermatologist declared that her only option was to have a skin graft, a procedure in which a piece of Hannah’s healthy skin would be used to repair her injury. That night, at her wits’ end, she turned to the internet and began researching alternatives.

Figuring manuka beeswax might have similar qualities to a graft, she melted some down and applied it as a face mask.

“It burnt the hell out of my skin, but when it dried and crumbled off, there was a definite improvement to the fleshy wounds on my face and the itch was reduced,” tells Hannah, who then spent her grocery money on oils to add to the mixture and kept applying it to her infection.

“Within 48 hours, the swelling and inflammation calmed, and every day afterwards the raw look of the sores lessened until I had new skin growing there.”

But while her facial problem was solved, finances were still an issue. Hannah explains, “I still needed to feed my kids, so I made some extra bottles of the balm and advertised them in the local paper – I made my money back overnight!”

She named the product Hannah’s Original Bumble Balm and word soon spread about its properties. Before she knew it, Hannah was off the benefit and starting her own business, buying 200 litres of coconut oil at a time and staying up until 3am to keep up with demand.

“I started making it in a four-litre pot in my kitchen and now I have my own factory,” says Hannah, who supplies to five Kiwi supermarkets and is expanding into Asia. “I was at the bottom of the barrel. I had no identity, no passion, nothing – and now I’m going to have an office in China! It’s incredible.”

The public response to the balm speaks for itself. Hannah smiles, “People come up to me and say, ‘I’ve had this patch of eczema for six months, but this is working,’ or, ‘I’ve had psoriasis on my scalp for 20 years and now it’s gone.’”

However, Hannah’s most memorable client was a man who unexpectedly knocked on her door one afternoon. “He’d been hit by a methylated spirits fireball and had second-degree burns all over his face.”

Hannah donated him two tubs of her balm and, a month later, “he was crying on my doorstep and his skin looked incredible”. She smiles, “It’s an amazing feeling to give someone an answer that took me so long to find, without them having to go through what I did.”

Indeed, it’s been a tough three years for Hannah – who’s gone from an unemployed single mother battling ill health to an international businesswoman – but Hannah says her life now is all about giving back.

“I want to help people who think life can’t change. I struggled for a long time, but now I have found my passion and I’m living.”

END OF ARTICLE

This article was released in July and a lot of things have changed since then.

My most recent endeavour is my range becoming approved through Foodstuffs and becoming available in the National Product Catalogue.

In English, this means that every Pak n Save Supermarket, New World Supermarket and four square throughout New Zealand can now stock my range of healing balms.

I was approved officially today!

I have spent most of the day crying (happy tears) as my kids would say, because I am so excited.

This is a massive achievement for me and I am so proud of how far I have come.

But I cannot do it on my own, now it's my turn to please ask for your help.

I need to raise $16,000 to purchase the production equipment/ machines I need. I do not have the finances.

I make every single balm myself, by hand.

A batch of 120 (of one type of balm) takes around 8-9 hours from the very beginning to the packaged product.

I have one employee and the workload for both of us has really increased since Christmas.

I am not in a position right now to hire more staff but eventually I know I will need to.

I really need to be able to make a lot of balms in a shorter amount of time.

To do this I need to purchase Two Filling Machines and some production materials and equiptment. The machines will enable me to manufacture in bulk and keep up with the demand while still providing amazing products that are not "rushed".

The two machines are very expensive and I do not have the finances to buy them.

I'm not the type to ask for help, in fact, I rarely do, so this is a big thing for me.

I'm a big believer when it comes to having faith.

I have felt and seen magical things happen and I know and trust that whatever comes from this will be the right thing.

I know that by opening this door it will also open others.

If you are able to help me in anyway, please know how truly grateful I will be. You will not only be helping me, you will be helping thousands of others...6 week old babies with eczema, elderly pensioners with psoriasis, teenage girls with acne, hardworking dads with dermatitis, solo mums with scarring...so many different people benefit from what I do.

My heart is in this, helping and healing is all I know and all I ever want to do.

I was recently involved in a hit and run (has been resolved now and the driver has come forward) but my body was crushed between two vehicles and because of this I have severe swelling and bruising to my left side and nerve damage.

This has given me a huge wake up call, I am usually on my feet 10 hours a day, every day, because that is the amount of time I need to be working to keep up with the demand of my beautiful balms.

Right now, I am still pouring them by hand.

Since the accident happened and while I've been recovering I haven't been able to work how I usually would and this is why it's important for me to ask for your help now.

These production machines will cut my work load in half, it is very important that I find the finances to get them.

Please feel free to follow my business growth and journey on facebook, I have over 7000 members on a private group page and over 7000 followers on my business page.

Even if you cannot donate to my cause please feel free to find me online, you never know, I may have something that will help you too!

Thank you for taking the time to give me a little.

Love Hannah xxx