Mattie's Blog and his Fight Against Osteosarcoma

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!

November 9, 2021

Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Tuesday, November 9, 2021 -- Mattie died 632 weeks ago today.

Tonight's picture was taken on Veteran's Day of 2007. Mattie was five years old and that day we walked down to Constitution Avenue from our townhouse in DC. The beauty of living in the heart of the city, you could easily walk to see parades as well as easily leave to head home. The facial expression on Mattie's face I knew well! This was the look I got whenever he was busy doing something and really did not want to stop for a photo. Yet he was good enough to comply! By that point he was used to my need for photo documentation.

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

Number of people diagnosed with the virus: 46,661,243
Number of people who died from the virus: 756,574

I am up to my ears in candy and snacks! Last night Peter packed our car, so I could deliver items to the National Institutes of Health. Fortunately Peter understands spatial relations, because I could never have packed the car so well and got everything to fit.

What looked good last night, wasn't great for me by day, when I had to drive. As I couldn't see out of my rear view mirror. Which was disturbing to me, especially driving on highways.

Get the idea of what was behind me?

Getting onto the NIH campus is challenging on a good day. Today I arrived, at the usual visitor's entrance, just to find that the entrance was closed due to construction. I was in a panic, because I had NO idea how to get onto the campus using any other entrance. So I contacted our friend Lori (who you see in red) and asked her what to do.

So today I entered the campus through the deliveries entrance. With all the trucks! It was an experience. I went through the same procedure of getting out of the car, the car got inspected, while I had to register with the guards and go through a metal detector.

I finally got to the NIH Clinical Center and fortunately a team came out to help and brought carts!

The team posing with all the items! They couldn't get over that all these wonderful things were donated by the community! As I always say, we have the best supporters.

When I got home, I started going through more items and started a stack for MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, which I am donating to on Thursday. Wondering what I am doing in a box? Well this enormous box was delivered to us today and it was filled with Cheez Itz! It was so heavy, I couldn't even lift it!

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Mattie in Summary

Diagnosis timetable: July 23, 2008 - tumor in the right humerus; August 1, 2008 - tumor in the left humerus; August 6, 2008 - tumors in the right femur and left radius. On August 6, Mattie was officially diagnosed with Multifocal Synchronous Osteosarcoma.
Tumor Resection and Limb salvage surgeries (repiphysis): on October 20, 2008 and November 12, 2008.
Percentage of Necrosis: 60% in right humerus; 80% in left humerus; 100% in left radius; 2% in right femur.
Chemo began on August 8, 2008: High Dose Methotrexate, Cisplatin, Doxorubicin; Ifosfamide, and Etoposide were added to the treatment protocol on December 1, 2008; MTP-PE was added to the treatment protocol on January 12, 2009.
Chest CT scans post surgery: December 5, 2008 – four 3mm lung lesions; January 8, 2009 – CT scans reveal no change in the lung lesions; March 19, 2009 - CT scans reveal slight changes in two of the lesions. With potential increases in size of up to 1-2 mm per lesion. On June 5, 2009, CT scans at 1.5mm cuts (so very refined cuts) revealed that Mattie's lung lesions doubled in size since January. The four lesions are now 8-9mm in size, indicating that Chemotherapy is not working.
Median Sternotomy: June 15th, 2009, removed 9 lesions, four in the left lung and five in the right lung. We do know that two of the lesions had calcified indicating bone material was present. This confirms that the bone cancer has metastasized to the lungs and that Mattie's chemotherapy was not effective at fighting the cancer in his lungs.
PET Scan: There appears to be a possible variant (i.e something abnormal) in the lower left femur, but as of now it is too small to determine what it really is. Normally, one would biopsy this, but the location is difficult as it involves the growth plate, and with lung surgery imminent, and Mattie just being off of chemo, the advice we're getting is to wait and watch, and to see what it looks like during the next scan.
Echocardiogram: Mattie has a reduced LVEF (Left Ventricle Ejection Fraction), which in layman terms means that his heart is not pumping with its normal level of pressure. Although it is not at a dangerous level, the doctors do want to monitor it with a follow-up echo in a few months to determine if this is a temporary impairment or if long term damage has been done.

H.R. 2109: CHILDHOOD CANCER SURVIVORSHIP RESEACH AND QUALITY OF LIFE ACT OF 2009

A bill, sponsored by Rep. Speier has been introduced in the House on April 27, 2009, to improve and enhance research and programs on childhood cancer survivorship. For more information, please visit the link below
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2109

This video highlights some advocacy efforts to provide more effective drugs for childhood cancer patients and access to better care for survivors. This link also provides information on how to contact your representatives to urge them to support this bill.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQY8vxO_quU

Mattie's Situation

Mattie Had Bone Cancer
Mattie had a bone cancer called Osteosarcoma. The diagnosis was: multi-focal, synchronous osteosarcoma. He had four tumors in his extremities: the upper portions of the right and left Humerus, which is the bone that connects the shoulder to the two lower arm bones (the radius and ulna), the lower (distal) left radius (right near the wrist) and the lower (distal) right femur (just above the knee joint). Although commonly found in adults, this type of bone cancer is very, very rare when found in six year old children.

Mattie started chemotherapy on Thursday, August 7, 2008, consisting of several five week cycles containing five types of drugs (Doxorubicin, Cisplatin, high dose Methotrexate, Ifosfamide and Etopicide). After the second cycle Mattie underwent a surgery (Oct. 20) to remove the tumor in his right humerus, and then a second surgery (Nov. 12) to remove the other three tumors. Mattie had three prostheses (both arms and the leg) that use the Repiphysis technology. We also tried an experimental drug called L-MTP-PE in the effort to give Mattie the best fighting chance of survival. It's a shame it wasn't enough.

All of our Family and Friends have done so many wonderful and amazing things for us to help Mattie. For that we are forever grateful. We want you all to know that we cannot thank you enough for these things and your selfless acts of kindness. We cannot adequately express how much your love, caring and devoted attention to Mattie meant to us. God Bless each and every one of you.

We made a deal from the beginning with Mattie to never lie to him about his situation, and we talked him through each step of the way. Mattie knew he had "some bad bugs" in some of his bones, and he knew that the drugs he was given were to kill the bugs, and the surgeries were meant to remove the bugs from his body. Mattie even requested from Dr. Bob Henshaw (who performed the surgery) "to let me keep a bone" once the procedures were over. Mattie did get several pictures of the procedures which he always thought were really neat.

This kind of statement only furthered our immense respect and astonishment that we had for Mattie and his emotional intellect, intelligence, and maturity. It was amazing that a six year-old could so quickly rationalize and embrace a situation and keep such a strong and positive attitude going, when his parents were a pair of emotional and physical trainwrecks. The irony is that Mattie gave us our strength to go on at a time when we should have been giving him his strength to fight.

Mattie's life during the 13 months of fighting cancer was not a normal one, even though we did whatever was humanly possible to make it as normal as possible. Fortunately, we have good friends who helped us get to the right doctors and to the program at the Lombardi Center in what everyone says was record-breaking time, who embraced us and helped us with what was unquestionably the greatest challenge of our lives. Of course, without our family and good friends, life would be a whole lot tougher than it is right now, so for those of you who are reading this, all we can say is Thank You and We Love You. God Bless.

Mattie's Blog... When Tragedy Inspires Hope

Mattie Miracle 15th Anniversary Video

Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation Promotional Video

Thank you for keeping Mattie's memory alive!

The Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation celebrates its 7th anniversary!

A Remembrance Video of Mattie

November 9, 2021

Tuesday, November 9, 2021

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Mattie Miracle Walk 2023 was a $131,249 success!

Mattie Miracle 2022 Walk Was a $114,500 Success!!

Mattie Miracle 2021 Walk was a $125,000 success!

MATTIE MIRACLE VIRTUAL WALK WAS AN $110,000 SUCCESS!

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Mattie Miracle 10th Anniversary Walk was an $119,000 success!

9th Annual Walk & Family Festival!

Mattie Miracle 8th Annual Walk & Family Festival was an $88,000 Success!!!

2016 Walk & Family Festival --- an $85,000 success

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Mattie Passed Away

Mattie in Summary

Washington Post Article on The Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation!!

Washington Post Article on Reach the Day and Mattie's Blog

H.R. 2109: CHILDHOOD CANCER SURVIVORSHIP RESEACH AND QUALITY OF LIFE ACT OF 2009

Mattie's Channel 9 Story

Mattie's Situation

Mattie's Medical Team

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