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

May 5, 2017

Friday, May 5, 2017

Friday, May 5, 2017

Tonight's picture was taken in June of 2009. Mattie was in the clinic and playing with his good buddy, Jocelyn. Jocelyn had osteosarcoma as well but Mattie was 7 and Jocelyn was 25. Despite their age difference they connected, understood each other, and Jocelyn was an excellent role model for Mattie. I will never forget when Mattie had to have his first limb salvaging surgery. I could try to empathize with him but I did not have first hand knowledge like Jocelyn. Jocelyn had a sense of humor and as she was talking about her amputation with Mattie she showed him her prosthetic, but did it in a non-threatening almost funny way. She then explained all the things she could do with her leg and this made a real impression on Mattie. So in essence she normalized a very abnormal experience. It is hard to imagine that both Mattie and Jocelyn are dead. 

This photo shows us sitting around the clinic's art table with Jocelyn and Katie (one of Mattie's wonderful HEM/ONC nurses). If you look closely you will see Mattie created an alligator out of a big clip and the alligator was chomping on my index finger! I still have this alligator clip in our kitchen. 


Quote of the day: You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.Friedrich Nietzsche


There are many aspects of the Walk that are challenging. One right off the bat is living in chaos. In order to prep materials for the Walk things have to come out of storage and therefore they are stacked everywhere. You can see what Mattie's room is turning into... a warehouse!
Raffle baskets everywhere! Hopefully with Peter's help, I will wrap them with cello and bows this weekend and then shuttle them off to our raffle chair!
In order to have a cup challenge wall, a lot goes into that production. Plastic colorful cups have to come out of storage. Each walk team gets 240 cups and we have 16 teams this year. So that is a lot of cups to keep track of. The purpose of the cups is a colorful way for teams to keep track of how many laps they walk around the track. With each lap, a team gets to place a colorful cup through a chain link fence. Since each team can earn up to 240 cups, that means that a team can walk 60 miles around the track. Some teams actually do this! 

1 comment:

Margy Jost said...

Vicki,

The picture, you posted is precious. I enlarged it so did see the clip. What will always & forever touch my heart are the genuine smiles kids in treatment for Cancer usually give!! I know many of those smiles are given when feeling good is not happening. I also know every picture does not have the smile. But I have many pictures of kids in various places of treatment providing the picture taker of a genuine, memorable, lifetime smile. I am glad, he & Jocelyn has each other!! That was so important.

Looking forward to finding out what color TEAM KIMBER IS!!!!