Hi friends and family!

My name is Sophie Ehrich and I am a sophomore at Marymount High School. I am very excited to announce that I am leading a team called “It Takes CURE-age” to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). Every year student candidates engage in a philanthropic competition to earn The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s “Student Visionary of the Year” title. This year I am one of those candidates. With the help of my teammates, my team hopes to raise $50,000 over a 7-week campaign, from January 19th- March 10th, 2023. 

I know $50,000 is not a small goal. However, I am confident that with your help and support, my team and I will be able to achieve this goal and help end the fight against cancer. 

I chose to fundraise with The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society because LLS has pumped over $1.5 Billion dollars into cancer research. In the last decade, over half the cancer treatments and drugs came from LLS-funded research. That research saved my dad’s life and that is why my campaign focus will be on research. 

When my mom was pregnant with me, my dad was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia or A.L.L. He did two and half years of Chemotherapy and thankfully has now been cancer free for 16 years. While he was going through his treatment, I had to get some live vaccinations because I was an infant. Chemotherapy’s goal is to kill cancer cells and while it is trying to do that it also kills white blood cells which fight diseases. Live vaccines have a very weak form of the disease they are trying to prevent. So if my dad was around me after I was injected with the vaccine he could have contracted a form of the disease and gotten very sick. Since the Chemotherapy killed his white blood cells he would have had no way to fight off the infection and it could have killed him. This made us have to live apart for months at a time when I had these vaccines. I do not want any other families to have to go through this complicated and hard process and to be able to enjoy the time they have with each other. Even now, 16 years later, my dad continues to go in for checkups twice a year to make sure he is cancer free, so it is still a big part of my life. I cannot imagine what growing up without a dad would have been like and I do not want anyone to have to go through it.  Although I consider myself extremely lucky to have had my dad be a part of my life, others are not so lucky. This is why I am a supporter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. 

Please consider joining this fight by making a donation. All donations are greatly appreciated and tax-deductible. Please visit my website often and SHARE it with friends who would also like to donate!

Thanks to your support, my efforts will help ensure this generation is the last to see cancer.

On behalf of blood cancer patients everywhere, thank you! 

For more information about LLS, please visit www.lls.org.