Monday, May 25, 2020

Monday, May 25, 2020

Tonight's picture was taken on Memorial Day of 2009. That day, friends brought Mattie all sorts of patriotic decorations. With that, he decided to decorate his wheelchair with red, white, and blue streamers and flags. Though we couldn't see the Rolling Thunder parade of motorcycles down Constitution Avenue, Mattie decided to make his own version of rolling thunder with his wheelchair. 


Quote of the day: Today's coronavirus update from Johns Hopkins. 

• number of people diagnosed with the virus: 1,662,302
• number of people who died from the virus: 98,218

In April, the Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation, held its annual Item Drive in memory of Mattie's 18th birthday. We are grateful that in the midst of the Pandemic, people still donated toiletry items! 

Today, Peter and I drove to Baltimore, to drop off half of the supply to Children's Hospital at Sinai. Tomorrow, we drop the other half at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. Mattie Miracle has two free in-patient carts that provides snacks, candy, and toiletry items to families caring for a children with cancer and other life threatening illnesses. These carts are crucial to families, who typically can't leave their child's bedside to get their own needs met. But now, the items on these carts are more important than ever, as COVID-19, limits the freedoms of children and parents. As they must remain isolated in their rooms for their own safety. 

When we arrived at the Hospital, we were greeted outside by Adina. We fund Adina's full-time child life position and we are honored to be working with her. She is not only highly competent and professional, but she has positive energy and is a deeply caring person. As face to face conversations are rare these days, it was nice to be able to catch up with Adina in person, enjoy fresh air, and also be able to drop items often. It is our hope that these items will be of help in supporting children and their families. 

I would say that the rest of the day, I spent on post-Walk administrative tasks. In addition, I am working on putting together a video of the virtual walk. That may sound easy, but with hundreds of photos that came into us through email and social media, it has taken me a while to dig out and organize them. So this video is truly a labor of love and because there was no live event, it takes much more thoughtfulness to create a story through the video.  

On another note, a cousin of mine in Italy, sent me this photo today. It was me of course with my paternal grandmother. I have no recollection at all when or where this photo was taken. But clearly, I know that I was trying to do a ballet pose for this photo!