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

April 22, 2014

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Tuesday, April 22, 2014 -- Mattie died 241 weeks ago today.

Tonight's picture was taken in January of 2009. We took Mattie to New York City for a second time to start his experimental treatment at Sloan Kettering. He had to start the protocol in New York but could continue treatment each week at Georgetown. Before Mattie's first infusion, we took him sight seeing in New York. New York is a challenging City to negotiate when you are fully functioning, however, with a disability and in a wheelchair, it was much harder. Nonetheless, we were determined to get Mattie around using taxis and even ferry boats! One nice by-stander snapped a photo of us with Lady Liberty behind us.


Quote of the day: Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul.


I found this quote on the Internet today. Certainly I understand the spirit in which it was intended and perhaps why the author even wrote it, but let's be honest.............. cancer impacts every part of the patient and the family. Both literally and figuratively. In fact, many childhood cancer treatments impact cognitive functioning, specifically treatments for brain cancer, and many high dosage chemotherapies have cardiac side effects. Mattie's therapies certainly did! So in these examples cancer directly affects the MIND and the HEART! Putting that aside, I know the psychological ramifications of cancer are NOT easily measured and quantified, and yet everything from diagnosis, scanning, living in the hospital, treatment, side effects, feeling ill, in pain, being isolated, losing friends, disease progression, and the list goes all weigh heavily on the MIND and HEART. All of these factors have consequences! Consequences that would never have arisen in the first place if cancer wasn't physically present. So yes cancer may be a physical disease, but unfortunately you are missing the forest through the trees if that is all you view it and treat it as. 

As of tomorrow, I will be on day 7 of working on Walk permits! However, it will practically be done! As of today, all permits have been filed and tomorrow I am headed to City Hall to pay our permitting fees, which have substantially tripled in cost from last year! Amazing no??! It is hard to at times accept these fees knowing that we are hosting this event on private property. But I realize it is the price of doing business. 

Later today, I went to Mattie's school to set up for tomorrow's last kindergarten art session. I am hearing feedback that the children are having lively conversations at their dinner tables at home about Matisse and Picasso and naturally their parents are wondering where this is coming from. That made me chuckle! I find the whole thing absolutely hysterical since I am not an art major, I am not an art educator, or an educator of young children. Yet something is being conveyed to these young minds! Tomorrow's lesson focuses upon the friendship and rivalry between these two great artists. In so many ways Matisse and Picasso understood and knew each other better than anyone else in the world! They certainly studied each nuisance of each others' works over the years, and in a way it was the competition between the two of them that sparked great achievements in art! Somehow the children always love this last session, given the hands on exercise and then the special snack. I will share photos tomorrow! 

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