Thursday, December 30, 2010

1 million reasons for hope

Have you seen the front of the Lunch for a Cure website?

$997, 375.96

That is the amount that we have raised online for Lunch for a Cure. Will today be the day that we break the $1 million dollar mark? Will we surpass it before year end?

Think about it - $1 million dollars is a lot of lunches. We have come a long way and that is a lot of research that simply would not have been completed had it not been for all of that lunch money. Looking back over the years it is really pretty incredible. We have helped to put over 100 kids on clinical trial that simply would not have been had it not been for our effort. Best yet, many of those children are still surviving today. You have to wonder, would they still be here had it not been for our lunches? Would they still be alive if it were not for the clinical trials that we funded?

Our lunches did not stop there, we did a mountain of other important work as well. When drug supplies disappeared in clinical trials, it was our lunch money that quietly and magically made them reappear again. In fact, their are kids continuing to get cancer fighting drugs today that are only doing so because we (you and I and all of our friends) decided to give up our lunches.

To me, that is incredible. Think about it. If your child was sick and the only hope was in a new experimental drug whose supply had run out, how would you feel? If there was a drug that could save your child's life but you could not get it, what would you think? You can't get them at the pharmacy. You can;t even get them directly from the pharmaceutical company - not even if your child's life depended upon it. You can only get most of these drugs through clinical trial and what if all of the drug for that trial had expired. How would you feel? What would you think?

That is the reality that many kids with neuroblastoma have faced. But, because of our lunches, it is not the reality that they had to live. We got them the drugs. We made it possible to finish the clinical trials.

And, that is why this lunch money is so important.

It saves lives.

It searches for the cure.

It has purpose!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I often wonder if Nicholas had the opportunity to clinical trials, would he be alive today? He Relasped in 2003 right before Sydney was diagnosed. Treated at Medical City Dallas. Knowing what I know now I would have done things differently. Thank you for all your hard work!