Friday, May 20, 2016

Friday, May 20, 2016

Tonight's picture was taken in May of 2009. This was one of Mattie's physical therapy sessions in the hospital hallway. Therapy with Mattie was NEVER boring. In fact, I really think Mattie pushed Anna, his physical therapist, to think way outside of the box when it came to him and therapy. Anna had to devise creative and fun ways to get Mattie up and using his body. Mainly because standing and trying to take a few steps were truly painful for Mattie. Pictured with Mattie was Linda (child life specialist), who was pushing his IV pole. Next to Linda, in purple, was Anna and then the woman Anna was pushing toward the wall was Meg. Meg was a child life intern and became Mattie's racing buddy. When Mattie did therapy, so did Meg. Meg competed with Mattie to try to inspire him to move and win the race. These ladies were great at hamming things up and the more they did, the more Mattie participated! 


Quote of the day: When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?' ~ Sydney Harris

For the next several days, I will post photos from this year's walk. Before the walk actually began, both Peter and I addressed the crowd, thanked them for attending, for helping us raise funds for the psychosocial needs of children with cancer, and of course reminded them why they were walking.

As of today, we have raised over $85,000 at the walk, and we had around 400 attendees!

This was the crowd on the track that we were speaking to! Herman, our photographer, stands on a tall step ladder to get the significance and volume of the crowd.

The crowd is comprised of teams and individual walkers, of all ages, eager to help us fill the cup wall and meet the challenge (challenge = if the wall got filled with cups then Mattie's grandparents would donate $3,000 to the Foundation to start a second Mattie Miracle snack/item cart). 

You can see the walkers moving passed Herman on the ladder!

The first lap!

It was a super cool and windy day (try 30MPH winds)! It maybe hard to determine this by looking at the photos, but this is the first Walk in which I had to wear long pants, layers, and a wool coat!

Pictured with me is Tricia, Mattie's favorite HEM/ONC nurse. Tricia was there for Mattie, Peter, and me during the good and bad times at the hospital and is not only a competent nurse but an amazing advocate. 

Behind us is Toni (with the pink headband), along with Brandon (Mattie's closest buddy in the hospital) and Gigi (Brandon's niece). We met Toni and Brandon pretty soon in the treatment process, because Brandon was diagnosed with Lymphoma a month after Mattie's diagnosis. We spent many days and hours in the hospital together and Mattie gravitated to Brandon. Despite their ten year age difference, Mattie considered Brandon his best friend. Brandon never misses a Foundation Walk!

After a walker completes a lap, they get a colorful cup (each team has their own cup color) to place in our challenge wall. This is a photo of some of our volunteers dancing to the DJ's music as they distribute cups to walkers. 

Then each of the cups gets walked over to the challenge wall where volunteers insert them into the chain linked fence (which serves as our challenge wall).










The beauty of the challenge wall! It is a rainbow of colors.

Volunteers work very hard to tally the cups being placed in the wall. Since each color corresponds to a different walk team, it is therefore possible to determine which team has completed the most laps (1 cup = 1 lap). 

The cup challenge was won by the SAINTS team this year. This team was comprised of students from the St. Stephen's and St. Agnes School. Each team is given 240 cups to begin with and the first team to walk 240 laps collectively (60 miles) wins the cup challenge.