Mattie Miracle Walk 2023 was a $131,249 success!

Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation Promotional Video

Thank you for keeping Mattie's memory alive!

Dear Mattie Blog Readers,

It means a great deal to us that you take the time to write to us and to share your thoughts, feelings, and reflections on Mattie's battle and death. Your messages are very meaningful to us and help support us through very challenging times. To you we are forever grateful. As my readers know, I promised to write the blog for a year after Mattie's death, which would mean that I could technically stop writing on September 9, 2010. However, at the moment, I feel like our journey with grief still needs to be processed and fortunately I have a willing support network still committed to reading. Therefore, the blog continues on. If I should find the need to stop writing, I assure you I will give you advanced notice. In the mean time, thank you for reading, thank you for having the courage to share this journey with us, and most importantly thank you for keeping Mattie's memory alive.


As Mattie would say, Ooga Booga (meaning, I LOVE YOU)! Vicki and Peter



The Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation celebrates its 7th anniversary!

The Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation was created in the honor of Mattie.

We are a 501(c)(3) Public Charity. We are dedicated to increasing childhood cancer awareness, education, advocacy, research and psychosocial support services to children, their families and medical personnel. Children and their families will be supported throughout the cancer treatment journey, to ensure access to quality psychosocial and mental health care, and to enable children to cope with cancer so they can lead happy and productive lives. Please visit the website at: www.mattiemiracle.com and take some time to explore the site.

We have only gotten this far because of people like yourself, who have supported us through thick and thin. So thank you for your continued support and caring, and remember:

.... Let's Make the Miracle Happen and Stomp Out Childhood Cancer!

A Remembrance Video of Mattie

March 11, 2015

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Tuesday, March 10, 2015 -- Mattie died 287 weeks ago today. 

Tonight's picture was taken in August of 2009. Mattie always wanted a ride-on vehicle and when he was healthy my reaction to that was simply, "no." It seemed too costly, not practical, and this was only the top two reasons on the "do not get list." However, when you find your child is dying from cancer, it is funny how your perspective quickly changes. Since this was on Mattie's wish list, this list was quickly granted. Mattie named this vehicle that my parent's gave him, "Speedy Red." Since Mattie was weak and was attached to all sorts of IVs and oxygen, there was no way I was going to let him operate this without me on it. He tolerated me with him for a while until he got the hang of using a gas pedal and a break. But then after that he really wanted the independence of driving by himself. So if you can picture him driving and me running around after him, that was the scene in our commons area! 


Quote of the day: There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well. Nicholas Spark


Today was day two at the "Comprehensive Cancer Care for Children and their Families" workshop sponsored by the Institute of Medicine and the American Cancer Society. Peter and I attended this workshop for two days. As last night's blog reflects, I delivered a speech at this workshop on Monday and tonight's photo shows four out of our five core psychosocial team members who are working on the National Psychosocial Standards of Care project who were in attendance. From left to right are: Peter, Dr. Anne Kazak (Nemours), Dr. Mary Jo Kupst (Medical College of Wisconsin), Dr. Bob Noll (University of Pittsburgh) and Dr. Lori Wiener (National Cancer Institute, NIH).

Our core team members each highlighted psychosocial research, but within their presentations also talked about the standards of care project as well as made it known to the audience that Mattie Miracle was the impetus for these Standards and is the significant funder of the project. Clearly Peter and I are motivated to do this work to help other children and their families, but of course what lies at the heart of what we always do is Mattie. What Mattie suffered and endured was super human and almost impossible to describe. In fact, I think that is most likely why when given three minutes in front of this large audience on Monday I elected NOT to go into all the gory details of Mattie's journey. If I did, that would have taken more than three minutes alone and then I would never have gotten any of my messages across. Mattie's battle was painful, significant, and psychosocially brutal. It will remain with us always and I suppose that is why on some level we feel compelled to correct a wrong.


At the workshop yesterday we also heard from Melinda Marchiano. Melinda is a lymphoma survivor and also wrote a book entitled, Grace: A Child's Intimate Journey Through Cancer and Recovery. I had the wonderful opportunity to talk with Lee (Melinda's mom) and Melinda today. Melinda's presentation was real, honest, candid, and inspiring. She did a beautiful job yesterday and as I told her today, no matter who you were in the audience, her message resonated with us. The misnomer our society has is that once treatment ends, you are cured and everything returns to normal. However, that is the furthest from reality. The treatment itself can lead to many late effects (side effects) which can be life altering and deadly (stroke, heart disease, infertility, hearing loss, high blood pressure, diabetes, and secondary cancers). But Melinda also clued her audience into the psychosocial picture of being a survivor. The pattern of not eating that developed while in treatment was a contributor to her developing an eating disorder. Once off treatment, she was not only a survivor, but she then had to find her way through recovering from an eating disorder. 

Needless to say the voice of parent advocates and that of Melinda's were crucial at this workshop. Though researchers and clinicians have the best of intentions and maybe the experts in their fields, they really still lack the personal insights we have of living through this ordeal. As the workshop very poignantly pointed out..... it is vital to give a voice to the child, the family, and the clinician in cancer care. All three play a role and when collaborating together, most likely optimal care is achieved. 

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