Category: Support network

An evening of wishes

Posted hopePosted in Support network, Volunteer & Donate

Make a wish foundation grants life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses. When a wish comes true, it creates strength, hope and transformation.

We had a great time at the evening of wishes gala! Our kid’s wish was to write a children’s book. Make a wish helped her work with a real children’s book author, Shirin Bridges. Kiddo also met and interviewed Annie Barrows, the famous author of Ivy and Bean children’s book series! She visited Chronicle books at San Francisco and learned about how a book gets published (from the initial submission, to design, editing, printing etc). At the gala, she was asked to read her upcoming book on stage. Apu was initially nervous, but was pleasantly surprised upon hearing the applause and support from the audience. She said it was one of the best feelings she ever had! Thank you so much Make a wish!! 💕🥰

Apu’s cartoon of her reading the book on stage, and with another wish kid, Finley who danced beautifully to Rachel Platten’s fight song.

Please reach out to the child life specialist or social worker at your hospital if you’d like to connect with Make a wish for your kid.

Light the Night 2019

Posted hopePosted in Support network, Volunteer & Donate

Huge thanks to all our friends who joined us yesterday at Light the Night, and to everyone that contributed to the cause!

Apu was called on stage to raise the white lantern in support of all survivors and patients. As she raised her lantern, people raised thousands of colorful lanterns to light the night sky, for a celebration of hope and strength, bringing light to the darkness of cancer. It was heartwarming beyond words to see the love and support from such a large community of patients, survivors and supporters… One of those beautiful moments where nothing else mattered — no race, gender, age etc… What an elegant celebration of the strength of the human spirit!

Personally, we felt humbled and grateful that Apu is well enough to celebrate her first chemo-free birthday in 4 years in such a positive and meaningful atmosphere, as part of Light the Night. She and her friends had a blast! They dressed up in their Halloween costumes and had fun with various activities such as face painting, bouncy slides, and balloon animals.

And a huge shout out to all our supporters! Thanks to your generous donations, our team “Brave Kids Fight Cancer” ranked second and raised ~$25000 to help the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society find better cures to end cancer. You’re all awesome – thank you for the continued support, prayers and wishes!!

Fantasy Flight by Cops Care Cancer Foundation

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We recently learned about the Fantasy Flight event from a friend. Cops from Bay area did an amazing job at organizing this annual event for kids fighting cancer. Kids and their families were treated to a VIP experience of riding in a motorcade of 50+ cop cars on 101 freeway (yep, with traffic stopped!), and kids operated the sirens. The icing on the cake was watching Santa arrive in a helicopter to distribute gifts to the kids!

The day was packed with fun games and events, including cops dressed as Superheroes, Star wars characters, and in various other costumes. HUGE THANKS to cops from San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Fremont, Los Altos and nearby areas for creating beautiful memories for children in treatment!

Kids and Art Foundation

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Cancer sucks. Art heals.

This is the motto of the Kids and Art foundation. Started by a mom who lost her kid to cancer, they focus on improving the quality of life of patients and siblings by “healing cancer through the arts”. Check out their monthly art workshops at various studios. If your kid is in Lucille Packard (Stanford) or UCSF, they even have weekly art workshops at the hospital.

We came to know about this organization a year ago, and since then have attended every single monthly art workshop. Our kid LOVES them! Not only is it a safe space to take children in treatment, but it’s a happy space where kids can just be kids and have fun, without worrying about their treatments and scars. The joy on their faces says it all!

Tonight, they had an exhibition of artwork by kids, and a special event to celebrate their 10th anniversary. Several artists (incl. some child artists), volunteers and generous donors gathered to celebrate their milestone. The foundation has helped 1800 kids so far, and has ambitious plans to expand their reach to more hospitals / locations, including bringing art programs directly to the hospital room (e.g., for kids in the stem cell units, ICU).

Way to go Kids and Art foundation! Inspiring to see how the pain from one mom who lost her kid to cancer, was converted to giving hope and joy to several hundreds of children…

Pablove – Empowering kids through photography

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Pablove Shutterbugs teaches children living with cancer to develop their creative voice through the art of photography. What a wonderful concept! I was blown away when I saw how it empowers kids to express their creativity and sense of wonder. Our kid, for instance, was so excited after last summer’s Pablove classes that she’d go everywhere with her new camera and try shooting pics at worm’s eye view and bird’s eye view :).

Yesterday, Pablove organized a half day event at Curiodyssey at Coyote point. About a dozen kids aged 7-18 gathered to photograph animals and birds, followed by outdoor pics in the bay. Some animals, like the otters, moved so fast that they were really hard to shoot. Interesting to see how the kids persisted — they kept trying patiently for several minutes until they got a good shot!

As the kids made new friends and photographed away merrily, parents had a chance to mingle as well, and share some lighter moments as well as stories. Behind the seemingly normal looking kids, were silent untold stories of pain, courage, strength, and sometimes several years of difficult treatment. Thanks to organizations like Pablove for empowering these kids! Kudos to Pablove!!!

Support network — Friends and Family

Posted hopePosted in Support network

Kids can’t fight cancer alone. Nor can their parents. No matter how strong we may seem, a good support network of friends and family goes a long way in helping!

Grandparents visited and stayed with us to help, which was a boon in disguise. Uncle visited quite often, to read books and play games, which our kid enjoyed very much. We have been super lucky to find a couple of very good friends who have been going out of their way to help. We keep running out of words to thank them!

As parents, we found it very useful to talk to other parents whose kids fought cancer and had positive outcomes. Understanding the best practices, do’s and dont’s, side effects to watch out far, tips to overcome them, questions to ask the doctors etc were very helpful. Although our kid was young (five when diagnosed), we found the suggestions from adult cancer survivors to be quite helpful. For example, we learned about the importance of juicing, which has since become a daily routine for us. We also learned about the benefits of alkaline diet, RO water, increased protein intake and other tips to help overcome the side effects of chemo.

As odd as it may sound, we initially avoided online support groups and search engines as we found the deluge of information quite overwhelming. Frankly, there’s too much information out there with little quality control, ranging from speculations about likely causes of cancer, anti-cancer diet, to articles and posts about kids developing various complications, relapses, negative outcomes… We were already crazy busy helping our kid fight the side effects of chemo and overcome the emotional trauma, that we didn’t have the stomach for hearing negative outcomes. We chickened out and avoided online support groups for a while…

Later, when our kid was more stable emotionally and physically (around the Interim Maintenance phase), we ventured into online support groups. We found a couple of good online parent support groups on Facebook (e.g., Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia) to be quite helpful.

Inspired by the support groups, we started this blog and the companion page, Brave Kids Fight Cancer on Facebook, to help share our experiences and ideas to help kids stay positive through the long and difficult treatment period. Hope you find it helpful. Please join and let us know what worked for you!