Heroes for Hannah Sep 20 – National Childhood Cancer Awareness
From St Baldrick’s Foundation
UPDATE: The hours for the event will be extended until 9pm. The Brasserie has generously decided to close their restaurant that night so you can all enjoy yourselves for longer. Thank you to the Brasserie!
There will be a live auction and other fun activities … more details to follow.
We are hoping that this grassroots initiative will unite our whole community and we can all come together and join in this event because childhood cancer does not discriminate – it does not care whether you are Caymanian or expat, whether you are white collar, blue collar or tee shirt. This affects us all.
More shavers have joined.
EVENT DATE Sep 20, 2013
LOCATION The event will be at the Wicket Bar, Cricket Square on Friday 20 September, from 5-7pm, George Town, Grand Cayman
Check out and share Gaylene’s Awareness video starring our Hero Hannah.
Awareness=Funding=Research=Cure
#gogold #childhoodcancerawareness #endchildhoodcancer
Hannah doesn’t have a choice about being bald. We are all shaving our heads to support Hannah and all kids fighting cancer, but more importantly, to raise money to find cures and this is why……
On the 9th July 2012, Nigel and Gaylene took their four year old daughter, Hannah to see her pediatrician because she was having some balance issues, falling over, walking into things. Within 24hrs they were being airlifted to Miami Children’s hospital with a copy of the CT scan that revealed a tumor on the cerebellum with hydrocephalus (fluid build up). Hannah had surgery on 12th July and was diagnosed with Anaplastic Medulloblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor.
Since July 2012, Hannah has been based at MD Anderson in Houston, TX returning to her home in the Cayman Islands for less than 7 weeks in total since then. Hannah has completed 6 weeks of cranial spinal proton radiation with sedation and weekly chemo, followed by 5 rounds of triple drug chemotherapy every 28 days as an inpatient. During this period, she was admitted 5 times through ER with neutropenic fever and potentially life-threatening infections. She had numerous MRI scans, lumbar punctures, audiology tests, ophthalmology tests, blood transfusions, tests and clinic consultations with her oncologist. In early April 2013, Hannah’s MRI showed the treatment was not working and the disease had progressed. She flew home for a few days and then on to fulfill her make-a-wish trip at Disney in Florida.
They returned to MD Anderson mid-April to discuss options. Relapse Medulloblastoma has less than 5% chance of survival for 3-5 years. They don’t even look beyond that. They cannot possibly begin to explain how that feels as parents. There is no longer a standard protocol to follow and the doctors just do the best they can, in what amounts to little more than an educated guess. There are other children for whom the mere diagnosis of their type of cancer amounts to a death sentence, and others where relapse has no hope at all, not even 5%.
Every day 7 children will die of cancer in the US at an average age of 8 and it is the leading cause of death by disease for children under 15, killing more than diabetes, aids, asthma, cystic fibrosis and congenital abnormalities combined. During this journey they discovered the shocking truth as to how little funding is allocated to pediatric cancer research. All of the drugs Hannah has been given were developed for adults, mostly over 25 years ago and most of them are not even approved for use in children. In terms of total life years lost, pediatric cancer is equivalent to breast cancer, yet receives a tiny fraction of cancer research funding. Kids can’t vote and are not celebrities. Their voice is not heard.
They started a different chemotherapy regime for the relapse in April this year, chosen because a trial showed some positive results. They hope and pray that it will work because they are running out of options. Funding is desperately needed for new trials, new drugs and treatment options for all pediatric cancers. The long term effects and damage from all the chemotherapy and radiation is permanent, horrific and endless. Even if she beats cancer Hannah faces a lifetime of disabilities.
We have to find a cure for Hannah and all the kids dying every day. We all have to do something.
Nigel and Gaylene, Hannah’s parents together with Neil, Hannah’s Uncle and Gayle, a family friend who has children the same age, are all going to shave our heads in September for St Baldrick’s. The St. Baldrick’s Foundation is the largest private funder (non-government) of childhood cancer research grants. Please support us by donating money to St Baldricks in Hannah’s honor to help raise funds specifically for pediatric cancer. Together we can make a difference. All these cancer kids deserve to have a chance just to be kids. They deserve to live too. Please click on the donate button, no amount is too small.
Thank you in anticipation
Your shavees
Gaylene and Nigel (Hannah’s Mum and Dad in the Cayman Islands)
Neil (Hannah’s Uncle in Gold Coast, Australia)
And Gayl ( Family friend in Melbourne, Australia)
End
While St. Baldrick’s is a lot of fun, there is one thing the Foundation could not take more seriously: investing every dollar raised in the best possible childhood cancer research.
An army of St. Baldrick’s volunteers have made it possible to award $103 million in grants since 2005–more than $25 million in 2012 alone.
Because of St. Baldrick’s funding…
…an idea turns into laboratory work
which may develop into a clinical trial
which may progress through all four phases of a trial
which may contribute to better, less toxic treatments or a cure.
The St. Baldrick’s Foundation funds every stage in the process.
And when you give to the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, you don’t just give to one institution–your money impacts children who are being treated at more than 215 children’s hospitals throughout the United States.
Lives are being saved
It takes decades of work to reach new discoveries through research, but children’s lives are being saved today because of research funded by St. Baldrick’s.
Immunotherapy improves the survival rate for children with high-risk neuroblastoma.
Most kids have the high-risk form of neuroblastoma, and only 1 in 3 of these kids were cured. By adding this treatment, which harnesses the power of the immune system, almost half of children may be cured.
Relapse rate is cut in half for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)–the most common form of childhood cancer.
This was accomplished by using an old drug (methotrexate) in a new way (high doses). Until now about 80% of kids with ALL were cured. Now it’s close to 90%.
Survival rate for kids with a rare type of leukemia dramatically increased.
A rare and very challenging type of leukemia (Philadelphia chromosome positive ALL) had seen very little progress in research in 50 years. Less than 20% of these kids were cured. Now by adding a new drug, Gleevec, more than 70% may be cured.
Accelerating discoveries in childhood cancers.
For childhood cancers that are both difficult to cure and uncommon, many research institutions have not been able to devote the resources necessary to open important clinical trials.
The St. Baldrick’s Foundation’s 2012 grant to the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) directly resulted in 130 research institutions opening four of these “high impact studies.” This is a dramatically successful initiative.
Children diagnosed with less common cancers or with cancer-related complications will have more opportunity to be treated on clinical trials, their best hope for a cure.
And this is just the beginning.
Read more about St. Baldrick’s grants and about the many ways that St. Baldrick’s funding is saving lives.
For more on this story go to:
http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/heroesforhannah
EDITOR: FACT: Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in children under
the age of 15 in the United States. See attachment for more facts from Alex’s Lemonade Stand
Please read Letter to Editor in today’s iNews Cayman from Nigel Meeson “September is Childhood Cancer Month
