Campaign Wrap Up

Thank you to everyone who donated to my campaign. Together we raised                                                                                                                   

$20,477

to find a cure for leukemia and other blood cancers! The students in the Atlanta SOY campaign raised a total of $210,285. At the Grand Finale Gala I was honored to receive the Mission Focus Award for best conveying the mission of LLS during the campaign. Good Day Atlanta aired a story about my family's journey with leukemia and my fundraising efforts which you can see below. Thank you again for all your love, support, and your amazing generosity! With your help it is now #Time2CureLeukemia! 

 

Help Me Raise Money to Find a Cure for Leukemia

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As many of you know, my connection to leukemia started before I was even born. When my mom, Renee, was 4 months pregnant she was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL). With her bone marrow over 99% cancer cells, treatment had to begin immediately. With lots prayer, the great doctors at Northside Hospital were able to treat Mom without harming me. Mom went into remission and I was born perfectly healthy! Almost 4 years later Mom’s leukemia came back, and she had a bone marrow transplant. But as sometimes happens the new immune system attacked Mom’s body and for 3 years she battled life threatening Graft Versus Host Disease of the liver. Finally, when I was about 7 years old Mom won her battle with leukemia once and for all!

My connection to leukemia gives me a chance to contemplate. With Mom’s complications statistics gave her only a 20% chance of survival. What if Mom hadn’t gone into remission and I had never been born? What if Mom had died and I had to grow up without her? These contemplations drive me to want to make a difference!

This year I am privileged to be nominated as a candidate for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's (LLS) 2016 Student of the Year campaign. The Student of the Year is a six-week fundraising competition to raise money to support LLS. I am asking you to help me assist the efforts of LLS to find a cure for blood cancer. If (or better yet WHEN) we reach $50,000 I will be able to name a research grant in honor of Mom. Yes, you read that correctly, more than $50,000 in 6 weeks to honor Mom, who means so much to me, with a research grant and to support LLS's mission to find a cure for blood cancers and improve the quality of life of patients and their families.

Blood cancers make up almost 10% of all new cancer diagnoses with 152 people dying from blood cancers every day but they do not receive the same level of attention as other types of cancer. People are surprised to learn that 40% more people die from blood cancers (56,630) than from breast cancer (40,730) each year. These statistics emphasize the need for a cure for blood cancers, but LLS’s research also has applications beyond treating blood cancers.… Of the 39 new cancer-fighting drugs approved by the FDA in the past 10 years, 19 were initially developed for blood cancers, and many had funding from LLS. All 19 of these drugs show promise for treating other cancers and diseases including lung, brain, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers, Diabetes, Rheumatoid Arthritis and MS.

Please join me in supporting The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) by making a donation to my fundraising campaign. Thanks to your support, my efforts will help fund LLS research that is developing treatments that saves lives as well as patient services, advocacy, public and professional education, and community services. All donations are greatly appreciated and are tax deductible. 

Please send the link to family and friends who might also like to donate!

My family’s leukemia story had a happy ending. I want every leukemia story to have a happy ending.

It’s #Time2CureLeukemia. Thank you in advance for your support. 

For more information about LLS and leukemia please visit lls.org and watch the videos below.

 

The Great Tape Up!

Thank you to everyone who joined us to tape Principal Downey to the wall! Everyone had a great time, we raised $241, and we were able to share a lot of information about blood cancers. I love seeing the orange wristbands with #Time2CureLeukemia around Northview!

  

  

 

Videos

1 - Overview of the LLS Therapy Acceleration Program - Great partnerships between researchers, academia, and pharmaceutical companies to bring drugs to market faster!.

2 - What is leukemia?

3 - Patient kills cancer (YES literally!)

Meet Doug Olsen, a chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) survivor. He was a patient whose condition deteriorated so badly, the only treatment available was a Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) funded clinical trial that focused on the effectiveness of Car-T therapy.

By taking some of Doug’s white blood cells and re-engineering them to kill cancer cells, Dr. David Porter and his team at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center were able to re-infuse them back into his body. Within four weeks, not a single cancer cell could be found. To this day, Doug remains cancer-free.