Mattie Miracle 15th Anniversary Video

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

January 25, 2019

Friday, January 25, 2019

Friday, January 25, 2019


Tonight's picture was taken in February of 2008. If you look closely, Mattie was holding a big stick in his right hand. We visited Roosevelt Island that day and in typical Mattie fashion, he always picked up a piece of nature along the way and then brought it home. I can't tell you how many branches, leaves, and acorns we had piled up in our commons area. Now, every time we pass these big rocks on Roosevelt Island we think of Mattie. 






Quote of the day: The Ultimate Measure Of A Man Is Not Where He Stands In Moments Of Comfort And Convenience, But Where He Stands At Times Of Challenge And Controversy. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.



We came across this article today entitled, Health‐related quality of life, psychosocial functioning, and unmet health needs in patients with sarcoma: a systematic review. These types of articles always catch our attention because they focus on sarcoma, of which Mattie had a type of sarcoma... osteosarcoma. 

Based on our cancer experience with Mattie, we felt the treatment for osteosarcoma borders on barbaric. Any time bones need to be removed from one's body as part of the treatment process, a red flag should go off! Maybe saying.... WARNING, this will have psychosocial consequences!

Such a warning bell shouldn't be coming from the parents and family. As we are too traumatized dealing with the diagnosis of childhood cancer. But what about the medical professionals..... shouldn't it dawn on them for example, that if Mattie had to have two arm bones and one leg bone removed that this was going to be problematic for him psychologically and socially? In our case, NO ONE flagged this as a problem and even when Mattie was exhibiting full blown medical traumatic stress symptoms, again no one recognized it. Other than us!!! It was Peter and I who demanded psychiatric assistance to help Mattie, but what if we did not have the energy to advocate, or even knew that we had the right to do so with our medical providers? All I know is without help, I am quite sure Mattie would never have been able to continue in treatment. As it had gotten so bad at one point, that NONE of his medical providers could approach Mattie and forget about touching him. 

Though Mattie did not survive, I always felt there would have been real psychological challenges we all would have had to face if he lived. Mainly because Mattie had enormous scars from surgery all over his body and his range of motion with his arms was very limited. So limited that he couldn't get dressed without assistance. In addition, Mattie was unable to walk and it would have taken intense physical therapy to relearn the walking process. Therefore, I hypothesized that osteosarcoma survivors are faced with very unique challenges and stresses that would make them feel and look different. Or in essence depressed and isolated. I have voiced my theory to other researchers, who have told me.... no, these children aren't very different from other childhood cancer survivors. 

So moving forward, reading the following conclusion from this study verifies my thinking...................

Compared to healthy individuals, patients with sarcoma frequently scored lower in physical and psychological quality of life domains and experienced higher rates of self‐image issues, depression, and suicide.


Now this makes intuitive sense to me, but what is being done about it? With regards to the medical treatment, I would say NOTHING. It hasn't changed much for children like Mattie, as they are still being given drugs from the 1950s and 1960s, and limb surgeries are still being done. Truly there is no humane way to treat osteosarcoma, which is why from our perspective what we can have control over and alter is the psychosocial care provided to children in treatment, survivors, and families. 


Health‐related quality of life, psychosocial functioning, and unmet health needs in patients with sarcoma: a systematic review.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pon.5007

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