Tag Archive for: charlotte pediatric cancer

Kicking Out Cancer

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Sometimes we come across a young adult that stops us in our tracks. And reminds us of how incredibly amazing kids are. This time it was Matthew Pennington who stopped us and made our hearts smile.

Matthew Pennington took part in Leadership Martial Arts’ Kicking Out Cancer event yesterday. The event raised a total of $5,200 benefiting ISF! Matthew won for most money raised and was presented with a autographed Carolina Panthers football. Matthew immediately donated the football back to ISF for us to use in our auction to raise more money. Gestures like these always gets us, especially when they come from kids. We learned that when Matthew was 10 years old, he lost his father to cancer. He started going to Leadership Martial Arts as a positive outlet after loosing his father. We love that he turned his pain into passion.

This is giving back. This is making a difference.

Grace donated her birthday money, she didn’t want other kids getting as sick as Isabella. Jackson joined Isabella’s Dream Team at 11 years old as the youngest member to help fund raise. Griffin, Riley, and Noah redeemed 5 year’s worth of arcade tickets for a Yeti cooler just to donate it back to our annual auction. Juliana wears purple every September in honor of Isabella, helping her high school every single year with their annual ‘Purple Out’. Blake saved every penny of her summer earnings at 7 years old to help ISF. We could go on and on about the incredible kids we have come across. And they all have reminded us of Isabella… who used to donate her birthday presents to the pediatric oncology clinic. Kids amaze us.

Giving back is important on all levels. All ages. Thank you Matthew for your passion. We were honored to spend the day with you yesterday.

Lake Norman Gives Back

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Our Lake Norman Cocktails For A Cure event on March 2nd is almost full!  Don’t miss out on this ‘Night of Hope’ to learn about the impact that The Isabella Santos Foundation is making in our community.  A fun night out with cocktails, food and entertainment by Joshua Moyer, paired with giving makes for the perfect  ‘feel-good’ date night.  We will have a beautiful piece of jewelry donated by Diamonds Direct to raffle off and in lieu of purchasing a ticket, we request that you please bring a favorite bottle of wine to donate to a wine pull.

If your in the Lake Norman area, stop by Circa 1873 at On the Nines Bistro for their Week of Giving leading up to the event.  From the dates 2/24 – 3/2, On the Nines Bistro will donate 5% of proceeds back to ISF.

To attend is free, but seating is almost full, please sign up here to reserve your seat today.   Please contact info@isabellasantosfoundation.org with questions.

Thank you to our generous sponsors:  Tri at the Trump, Modern Nissan of Lake Norman, Redfin

Outside Looking In

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I haven’t been able to shake the news of TJ Anderson’s passing today. I can never fathom being in TJ or Isabella’s parents’ shoes, heads or hearts and losing a child to cancer. With Isabella, I simply watched from the outside looking in. It changed me forever.

I will never forget watching Isabella’s little body struggle for life with every breath she took during 3F8 antibody treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. I will never forget the 2 ER visits in one night due to adverse reactions to treatments that day. I will never forget taking a shift at night in the hospital so that Isabella’s parents could get some rest… and Isabella was up all night puking blood in a bucket while her life was hooked to machines. I will never forget the next morning as she lifted her head off the pillow and her dyed red hair was falling out AGAIN due to the kitchen sink chemo procedure. I will never forget sitting with her during chemo treatments at Levine Children’s Hospital and watching a teenager receiving treatment right across from us… when both Isabella and this teenager should be with friends or at school. I will never forget getting called in the middle of the night to come sit with Isabella’s siblings while her parents rushed her to the hospital. I will never forget Erin’s shaking hands as she begged and pleaded with the doctors to operate after they said there was no more options. I will never forget the doctors lecture on how it was time to think about Isabella’s quality of life. I will never forget kissing Isabella goodbye while she laid un-alert in her parents bed and how ashen she looked.

I will never un-see these moments. I saw too much to not take action and continue fighting. I watched from the outside looking in. It changed me forever.

We talk a lot about taking action… awareness is simply not enough. What are you doing to turn your awareness into ACTION?

– Rachel, ISF Marketing Director

TAKE ACTION:
Donate
Volunteer
Sponsor: dre@isabellasantosfoundation.org

It Started With A Girl…

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New year. New look.  With 10 years behind us, we made the decision to start the new year with an updated look.  We have so many new things on the horizon, we felt like our Isabella logo needed to evolve again as the foundation grows.

You probably have noticed that we take every detail into consideration here at ISF.  We like purple… we like to make sure our mark in on everything and no bow goes untied.  Our ISF girl logo is no different.

When the foundation was created, our stick logo was created based on Isabella.  Very innocent and child like.  Because of Isabella’s physical limitations, art became her safe place.  Isabella would spend hours drawing and coloring.  She would draw pictures for everyone and it became her way of saying thank you.  What started as a stick figure little girl that Isabella could easily draw and color, became something else.  It became her legacy.

Several years ago, Isabella’s stick figure logo evolved into the girl on the world.  After all, that is how we all saw Isabella.  We saw that the world was at her fingertips and no matter what happened to her, she was going to conquer anything.  It started with a girl….

This logo has moved and shaped into a life of it’s own.  We love to spot our Isabella logo around the community and on the walls in the hospitals or organizations we work hard to impact.  We love that Isabella lives on through her own art stamp and that we see her in the kids we are hoping to help. She is changing the world.

What do you think of our updated Isabella logo?

I HOPE…

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There are so many things we HOPE for.  This poem (author unknown) sums up all our HOPES and the reasons we continue to fight pediatric cancer.  We posted this poem earlier in the year and not only did it become our most popular post of 2017, but of all time.  As we wrap up our 10th year of the foundation, we thank you for fighting with us, for supporting us, for crying with us, for believing in us…. and most of all for helping us continue to keep Isabella’s legacy alive as we fight childhood cancer.  It started with a girl… and she is changing the world!

We hope you and your family have a wonderful (and safe) New Years Eve and look forward to conquering our HOPES together in 2018.

Isabella after brain surgery

I HOPE…

I hope you never have to hear the words, ‘Your child has cancer.’

I hope you never have to hear, ‘The prognosis is not good.’

I hope you never have to prepare your child to undergo radiation or chem

otherapy, have a port surgically inserted into their chest, be connected to IV poles.

I hope you never have your child look at you with fear in their eyes and say, ‘Don’t worry Mommy, everything will be okay.’

I hope you never have to hold your child as they vomit green bile.

I hope you never have to feed them ice chips for lunch.

I hope you never have to watch the ‘cure’ you pray for slowly take away their identity, as they

lose their hair,

become skeletal,

swell up from steroids,

develop severe acne,

become barely or unable to walk or move,

and look at you with hope in their eyes and say,

‘It’s going to be okay, Mommy.’

I hope that you never have to stay in the hospital for weeks, months, or years at a time, where there is no privacy, sleeping on a slab, with your face to the wall, where you cry in muffled silence.

I hope you never have to see a mother, alone, huddled, in a dark hospital corridor…crying quietly, after just being told, ‘There is nothing more we can do.’

I hope you never have to watch a family wander aimlessly, minutes after their child’s body has been removed.

I hope you never have to use every bit of energy you have left, with all of this going on around you to remain positive, and the feelings of guilt, sorrow, hope and fear, overwhelm you.

I hope you never have to see a child’s head bolted to the table as they receive radiation.

I hope you never have to take your child home (grateful but so afraid) in a wheelchair because the chemo and radiation has damaged their muscles, 35 pounds lighter, pale, bald, and scarred.

And they look at you with faith in their eyes and say, ‘It’s going to be okay Mommy.’

I hope you never have to face the few friends that have stuck beside you and hear them say, ‘Thank God that is over with,’…because you know it never will be.

Your life becomes a whirl of doctors, blood tests and MRI’s and you try to get your life back to ‘normal’.

While living in mind-numbing fear that any one of those tests could result in hearing the dreaded words…

‘The cancer has returned’ or ‘The tumor is growing.’

And your friends become even fewer.

I hope you never have to experience any of these things…Because…only then…

Will you understand…

(author unknown)