Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Tonight's picture was taken in August of 2008. Mattie was in the hospital coping with his first month of chemotherapy. Mattie hadn't lost his hair at that point, but Peter took him to the barber to get it cut very short, to start preparing us all for the transition. Right from the beginning Mattie used his creativity skills to cope with the crisis at hand. Mattie could build and design with just about any material!
Quote of the day: In youth one has tears without grief; in age, griefs without tears. ~ Joseph Roux
THREE more days left to vote in the WTOP Click-For-A-Cause contest! Voting is easy and takes ONLY SECONDS to do! Winning this contest would enable us to provide more support to children with cancer and their families!
Recently we attended childhood cancer events on Capitol Hill and on the National Mall, and several people we interacted with thought the ONLY thing Mattie Miracle did was advocacy and awareness. That is only one of the things Mattie Miracle does! We also proudly support children with cancer and their families by completely funding a child life specialist at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital (a professional assisting 3,500 children/families per year), providing a free snack cart to families caring for children who are in-patient (a cart which supports 1,500 families per year), and supporting a monthly pediatric nurse support group luncheon to assist these professionals who are on the front line of psychosocial care.
Help us bring awareness to childhood cancer... please vote and share this post with friends and family.
To vote, go to: http://wtop.com/contests/click-for-a-cause-voting/?char=m
In March, Peter and I participated in an Institute of Medicine workshop in Washington, DC. At the workshop, we had the opportunity to hear Dr. Kira Bona (Pediatric Oncologist) discuss her research. For years I have heard that families can go practically bankrupt while financing their child's cancer treatment, yet I really did not have much data to support this claim. In the link below, Dr. Bona acknowledges that even at Dana Faber, which is one of the more well-resourced treatment centers in the Country, about a third of families are reporting food, housing or energy insecurity six months into treatment. This is truly significant, because in addition to a family in crisis over a cancer diagnosis and the havoc that ensues with treatment, many families are also worrying about money and their family's livelihood.
Childhood Cancer Devastates Family Finances too
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