Little Air Bear has a new little sister!
(she was wearing a mask because she had a cold)
Part of the miracle of having a new sister is the awesomeness of ViaCord's Sibling Connection program. Through ViaCord's program we were able to save the stem cells from our new baby girl's cord blood and we banked it, along with some cord tissue, in hopes it could save Erin's life. If Erin's Acute Myeloid Leukemia were to relapse she would need a bone marrow transplant. If our new baby is her perfect match (our other two kids were not) then instead of using a bone marrow donor off of the Be The Match registry we would use our new baby's cord blood for the transplant.
Isn't science amazing?!
Our family is in love with our newest addition. We are now a family of six!
It was so much fun having the kids see their new sister for the first time, but funny enough, the kids spent most of the time pretending to be doctors rather than oohing and aching over their sister. There's something that has to be said about our family who spent 146 days in a hospital room during cancer treatment: The kids LOVE to play with all the medical gadgets. Our new baby had several "doctors" all trying to take her blood pressure and check her heartbeat.
Besides having a baby, we have been actively raising awareness and raising funds for the upcoming 2nd annual CureSearch Walk in our area! Up to now, our team has raised $4117.09! We are getting closer to our goal to raise $5000 by Saturday. We only have 4 days left!
So far this year, our walk has raised $104,609! Our goal was $90,00 and we have exceeded it by nearly $15,000 already!
Thank you so much to all of you who have donated this year and in years past. We appreciate so much that you have been willing to help us raise money for childhood cancer research. 100% of your donation to our walk will go directly to childhood cancer research. Just 30 years ago there was no cure for childhood Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Now the success rate is near 60%. That's good, but not good enough. We hope that through raising funds for research we can get that cure rate for AML and all other childhood cancers to 100%!
