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

August 10, 2016

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Tonight's picture was taken in August of 2008. Mattie had just begun chemotherapy and one of the diversions his art therapists got us engaged in was painting a clinic ceiling tile! Though his therapists had just gotten to know us, they quickly deduced that Mattie LOVED Scooby Doo. So they literally sketched a Scooby Doo scene on a tile and then over the course of a couple of weeks we painted it in. As you can see this was a photo of us with the tile. This tile still remains on the ceiling of Georgetown's outpatient clinic today. 


Quote of the day: The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive, but do not forget. ~ Thomas Szasz



I would like to create a memorial brick for Mattie that will be placed by this Angel of Hope statue in Woburn, Massachusetts. Thanks to our cancer network, a friend gave us the contact person for the lady in charge of coordinating this beautiful statue. Her name is Maureen Webster. 

So before I left Boston, I emailed Maureen. Maureen immediately responded and took it upon herself to look at the Mattie Miracle website and the work that we do. Given how she responded I felt that she was speaking from the personal experience of losing a child. Not just a person working for the town of Woburn helping to process a request. 

I asked Maureen if she lost a child too, and she shared her nightmare with me. A nightmare that inspired her to get an Angel of Hope statue in her town. I totally appreciate her sentiments, but am truly in awe of her courage. Her story is VERY different from mine and I encourage you to visit her website about Nolan, her 22 year old son who died on a vacation trip to Mexico. The issues that Maureen highlights are so startling and impact hundreds of US tourists a year, that she took the tragedy of her son's death (or in a way murder) to start a non-profit called Mexico Vacation Awareness. 

In essence Nolan went to Mexico as a graduation present from college. While at a top resort in Cancun, he went swimming. However, he hit his head in the pool and lost consciousness. There wasn't a life guard on duty, so fellow guests rescued him and one was a trauma room nurse from Canada who tried to perform life saving measures on him. However, this nurse was physically restrained by the hotel's doctor and was prevented from intervening. After Nolan's death the nurse contacted Maureen and recounted what happened, as did many other guests who reported wrong doing on behalf of the hotel. When the paramedics showed up, they did not try to resuscitate Nolan. Instead they threw a blanket over his head and pronounced him dead. No one from the hotel ever contacted the family! If that is not bad enough, they left Nolan's dead body by the side of the pool for four hours. The story is actually gruesome and I can only imagine the pain of hearing this news from witnesses. Knowing that from their perspective Nolan would be alive today, if the proper interventions were performed. 

Nolan's story is horrific enough, but there are countless others of loved ones being killed because of corrupt police or negligence on the part of hotels with poor safety and security measures. I found Maureen's website so upsetting because unlike cancer, it seems to me that such accidents could be prevented. She is advocating that the US government provide better warnings to tourists going to Mexico. 

http://mexicovacationawareness.com/


Before we left Massachusetts, we visited the Angel of Hope statue and placed this hand made stone right by the angel. The stone says, "Mattie, love you to the Moon & Back." 



1 comment:

Margy Jost said...

Vicki,

I am so very sorry for this Mom! I too, find her courage astounding and the obvious wrongdoing extremely troubling. Many people who do amazing things for others, have experienced great tragedy in their own lives.

The stone, you left in memory of Mattie is wonderful. I am happy that Nolan's Mom responded to you so quickly and you were able to do it on this visit. I plan to visit her website.

I love the SCOOBY DOO ceiling tile. I know how to get to Mattie's tree but I would still like to see the brick? and the ceiling tile, if people are allowed to come into this area at the Georgetown Clinic