Sean Needs Your Help

We have a 5 year old friend in Utah: Sean.

Sean is dying from Acute Myeloid Leukemia (the same cancer our Erin had). His body is shutting down right now.  It has been so hard seeing other family's on the other end of the spectrum, whose kids don't get to stay here and they never hear the word "remission." 

Please consider donating to the family's paypal account to help pay for funeral expenses. Mark it "gift" and "personal" in paypal and send donations to saltammar@yahoo.com. 

Sean's mom is a single mom of two boys.  She is about to loose Sean, and  her 8 year old son lives in a wheel chair.  Any donation would help.  Please remember this little family in your prayers.

Raffle for a Trampoline, Firehouse Pizza, & Aggie Tickets

Team Cache Valley Cancer Kids is at it again!!!!!

Stop by the entrance to Macey's in Providence 

between 4:00pm-8:00pm FRIDAY 

and buy a $1 raffle ticket, 

you'll be entered to win:

1. A 15 Foot Propel Trampoline donated by Al's Sporting Goods

2. A $25 Gift Card to Firehouse Pizza

3. Tickets to an Aggie Men's Basketball Game 

Raffle tickets are $1 apiece and you can purchase as many as you like to better your raffle chances. All proceeds will go to CureSearch for Children's Cancer Research.

Tickets will also be sold Saturday, May 26th at Al's Sporting Goods. Listen to Q92 that evening and the winner of the trampoline will be announced!

Out of the Mouth of the Cancer Child's Siblings

My kids have a different way at looking at cancer than most kids.  Actually, most kids probably don't know much about cancer and that's really the way it should be.  My kids have been saying things now and then about cancer that I just keep meaning to write down because it's very interesting how they see things now.  I wish I could remember all the odd remarks they have made over the last "almost" 2 years.  These are some of the latest.

My 5 year old son said the other day, "I hope our next baby has cancer.  That way we can play in the big play room at Primary Children's." 

Um, yeah!  My son obviously does not get the picture of what cancer really is.  But, we are so grateful that he has come away from this experience without emotional scars from what we went through.  An extra reason we love Primary Children's is the Forever Young Zone on the 3rd floor.  The staff & volunteers there spent many hours playing with all of our kids either in the playroom or in Erin's room.  They were so kind to our kids and gave them extra special attention, after the months of being there, many of the workers there knew our kids names without us having to tell them."

Yesterday my almost 7 year old daughter said, "I am going to be a nurse when I grow up.  I want to work at Primary Children's Hospital with the cancer kids."  I responded, "You'd make a great nurse, but it would be really hard work because not all kids with cancer live and you'll have a lot of sad moments working there."  She said, "I still want to do it."  

I really think she'd be a remarkable nurse.  I'm not all doom and gloom, but I want her to know the reality that it's not going to be fun and games and that a lot of kids die of cancer.  There were many days there that I'd come out of Erin's room to find my nurse and several other nurses with tears in their eyes.  I always wondered who lost a child that day.  

A Boy or a Girl?

For the last few weeks Erin has been certain that our upcoming baby is a girl!

I guess we should've listened to her because she was right.

Erin is going to be a big sister.

Our Baby Girl is due in September.

We are getting in touch with Viacord about saving this baby's cord blood.

Why?

First, our two other kids were not bone marrow matches for Erin, so she doesn't have a perfect sibling bone marrow match (yet).  If this baby is a match and Erin relapses then we'll have a perfect match for Erin.  Viacord has a sibling connection program that will save our baby's cord blood in case Erin needs it.  Isn't that awesome?

Did you know that you can donate your newborn's cord blood to a cord blood bank?

It's really easy and as far as I've researched it's FREE to donate the cord blood.  It doesn't hurt the baby or the mom.  Our friend Millie has relapsed ALLeukemia and is undergoing chemo and soon some awful radiation in preparation for a cord blood transplant, it's similar to a bone marrow transplant, just using cord blood instead of bone marrow.  Our friend Brielle, who had relapsed AMLeukemia recently successfully finished her cord blood transplant.  

Generous people donate their newborns' cord blood to a bank like Viacord and then it becomes available to save lives!  It has saved Brielle's life and could save Millie's too!

So, if you're expecting and you aren't planning on saving your baby's cord blood please consider researching more about donating it and saving a life!  Cord blood can be used to treat up to 80 different diseases.

Check out the Viacord website.

Donations Still Being Accepted

The Benefit Concert for CureSearch last night was a smashing success!  Our performing artists displayed fabulous musical skills and it was a night of great music and good feelings as we were all working towards one goal, funding childhood cancer research and finding a cure!  Stay tuned to this blog to see photos and a short video clip from the concert.

If you missed the concert, we're so sorry!  But, you can still donate!

If you want to email me at cachevalleycancerkids@gmail.com I can give you may mailing address if you want to mail a check or drop off cash.

OR

You can go to our DONATION SITE HERE and donate by credit card to our General Team Donation for our CureSearch Team "Cache Valley Cancer Kids."