Tag: donate

September – Childhood Cancer Awareness Month!

Posted hopePosted in Volunteer & Donate

Update from Oct 14, 2017: Thanks to the help from our awesome supporters, our team raised around $5000 for the Light the Night event! Huge shout out to each one of you for helping save lives!!!

September is the month of Childhood Cancer awareness. Most people are unaware of some of the shocking facts about childhood cancer (e.g., did you know that one in every 5 children do not make it? And that only 4% of federal government cancer research funding goes to children? See the post below for more facts).

We invite everyone to join us in bringing light to the darkness of cancer by donating towards our fundraising efforts in support of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s “Light The Night” walk.

Our life changed in an instant when our five year old daughter was diagnosed with B-cell Acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The following months were a nightmare with intensive chemotherapy, including a series of hospitalizations, numerous chemo shots, lumbar punctures and blood transfusions (you can read about it here). Her sixth birthday was in the above setting. Today, thanks to the help from doctors, friends and family, our kid is feeling better, just started going to school, and is gearing up for her seventh birthday. 🙂

To celebrate her birthday, and those of several other children that are fighting, or fought against cancer, we invite you to join our team in LLS’s annual fundraising event,  Light the Night Walk.

You can help in any way — by registering to walk  or by donating here.

Your participation in the Light The Night Walk will help save lives. Please act today!

Thank you for bringing us all closer to living in a world without cancers!

Our Summer 2017 Fundraiser

Posted hopePosted in Volunteer & Donate

Update: Thanks to everyone’s generous contributions, we managed to raise over $9K this summer (around $15k after gift match) to benefit to St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. THANK YOU for coming together as a community to help support the good cause!

You don’t have to be rich or famous to help. You don’t even have to be a grown up. You just need a kind and determined heart. At least, that’s what two six year olds taught us last year… Around Thanksgiving 2016, when our kid was struggling with her intense cancer treatment, she and her friend came up with an idea of a funding campaign to help kids that are sick. They wanted to have a lemonade stand (we hadn’t heard of Alex’s Lemonade stand then).

I must confess our initial reaction was one of skepticism — after all, what could a six year old kid do to help beat such a dreadful disease? But the girls were so sincere in their idea of a funding campaign that we decided to play along.

Still, lemonade in winter? You’ve got to be kidding! We tried talking the girls into considering something a bit more sane. Their next idea was to sell artwork to raise funds to help kids that are sick. With a cold and rainy winter season, artwork sounded way more reasonable, so we agreed to help them with their plan (thinking they would forget soon).

Much to our surprise, in the following months of hospitalizations and chemotherapy, our kid generated piles of artwork (over 50!). It was our turn to do something to help. After some failed attempts at selling the artwork (the logistics of an art exhibition etc were too complex, especially since she was still in intense frontline treatment), we thought why not convert her artwork into a storybook? We self published a fun and adventure book for children, and created an online fundraiser to help the kids with their efforts (the least we could do!).

Now, we ‘ld like to invite you and your friends to join these six year olds in their efforts to help other kids fighting cancer. Click below to donate now. For tax deduction and employee gift match, please donate directly at http://stjude.org/donate and send the email receipt to bravekidsfightcancer(at)gmail(dot)com. We will consider it as a donation towards the above cause.

 

See Apu’s CampaignPowered by Fundly

Volunteering and Donations

Posted hopePosted in Volunteer & Donate

Here are some facts about childhood cancer. Want to make a difference? There are many ways to help. You could volunteer at one of the cancer hospitals, or for the several non-profit organizations that are committed to helping end cancer. Below are a few examples in the Bay area.

Please do consider making a donation to any of these organizations or others of your choice. Your donations are tax deductible!

  • Donate to St. Jude Children’s Research hospital. Families never receive a bill for treatment, travel, housing or food.
  • Donate to Leukemia, Lymphoma Society. LLS is the largest voluntary health organization dedicated to funding research, finding cures and ensuring access to treatments for blood cancer patients.
  • Donate to Camp Okizu and help them support all members of families affected by childhood cancer to heal through peer support, respite, mentoring, and recreational programs.
  • Donate to Kids & Art foundation and help them improve the well-being of children by healing through arts. They offer weekly art workshops at children’s hospitals in the Bay area and monthly workshops at various destinations.
  • Donate to Jacob’s Heart and help them support underprivileged families with grocery deliveries, transportation to hospital/clinic, basic financial assistance etc.

Transition back home

Posted hopePosted in Phase 2: Consolidation

    

The transition back home was a bit rough initially. From mundane things like keeping the house sanitized, trying to restore “new” normalcy after an insane month of induction at the hospital, to continued sleeplessness and the emotional trauma of losing hair.

The transition from one month at the hospital to back home was a bit hard. We were concerned about her safety, physical and emotional well being. Of course, there were the additional concerns about keeping the house clean and germ free. And you couldn’t just outsource chores or get house cleaners etc, since each visitor was a threat to her low immunity.

Keeping one room in the hospital clean is quite easy, but keeping an entire house spot clean is not at all trivial! We changed the bed linens everyday, swept and steam vacuumed the house everyday (eventually this became every couple of days or once a week). This was quite tiring, especially since we also had to cook, wash dishes / clothes, while engaging her and keeping an eye on her safety all the time…

Thankfully, grandma and grandpa were able to help with some of the household chores.

It was hell on the emotional front. Our kid hadn’t seen herself in a mirror for 1 month, and now, she couldn’t believe what she saw in the wall-to-wall mirror door in our master bedroom. She cried that the nurses and doctors at the hospital had ruined her life — she felt ugly with a puffed football-like face and little hair on her head. “How can I go to school like this? My teachers and friends will not recognize me and will laugh at me”…

Our immediate project was to cover the mirrored doors, hoping that out of sight would be out of mind. Still, she would wake up crying hysterically in the middle of the night, being violent and hard to control. At those times, our #1 concern was her safety, that she should not fall or hurt herself unknowingly, as it could lead to internal bleeding and unnecessary surgeries or complications…

She experienced an intense emotional turmoil. “Look at me, this is not a life. I don’t want to live like this. I want to kill myself”. It broke our hearts to see her like this…

During this period, we watched inspiring movies like the “Beauty and the Beast” and discussed how looks don’t matter, and what matters is a brave and kind heart. We went on a trip to a good hair salon and she saw me cut my waist-long hair very short. I told her, “See, Mama cut most of her hair, but she’s still the same, and loves you very much!”

Later, she cut her hair too (or whatever was left). We donated our hair to “Wigs for kids“. She was happy that our hair was going to help sick kids feel better, by making fancy wigs for them. We also ensured her that after the treatment, her hair would grow back nicer and stronger. And we could come back to the hair salon to get any cool hairdo of her choice. She seemed much happier…

Overall, the induction phase was like living on a volcano, not knowing when it would erupt… It was over a month since she (or us) slept for more than 1-2 hours at a stretch.