Tag Archive for: charlotte pediatric non profit

ISF 2017 $1 Million Goal Hit!

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$1,000,000 was our 2017 fundraising goal. $1,025,467 was raised! We are beside ourselves with excitement and extremely grateful for your support. Thank you to our volunteers and employees that work tirelessly towards our foundation mission.

We set a very specific objective behind our 2017 goal… bringing a MIBG room to Levine Children’s Hospital. This new-state-of-the-art MIBG room will help families with kids facing cancer.  Charlotte will be one out of 20 hospitals in the country that will be able to offer this to patients. We are excited to see ground break in March in honor of Isabella’s birthday and look forward to sharing more specific developments as this new pediatric cancer treatment room and program developments.

ISF helped  fund the Frontline MIBG Therapy project trial through the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) last year. This trial hopes to reduce the number of children who relapse and reduce the burden of late effects of therapy. It will be ready for children across the country in late 2018 where an MIBG room is available.  It is very exciting that Levine Children’s Hospital will be able to offer this advanced therapy.

WHAT IS MIBG? A cutting edge, targeted therapy used to treat relapsed or high-risk neuroblastoma with little to no pain and side effects. This treatment requires a highly specialized team to deliver the therapy and a special room to assure that patients, family, and health care providers are safe.

WHY IS BUILDING A ROOM SO EXPENSIVE? The room is specifically designed for this type of therapy and is created with lead shielding due to the radioactive nature of the treatment. These lead walls provide the highest level of protection for patients and families. The MIBG room will have an adjoining suite so the patient will always be close to their family.

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)