Sitting poolside during Charly's swim lessons today, I
received a call. It was Susan from the Leukemia Lymphoma Society (LLS).
She explained she was calling about an important fundraiser that the LLS
holds annually called Man and Woman of the Year. Last year, the local
candidates raised $220,000.
Not know where this call was going, I took a mental step
back. We are feeling pretty confident about our modest $1000 team goal
for Light the Night. There is no way I have the contacts to raise
$10,000, let alone $220,000! I “hmmm-ed” an interested sound and let her
continue.
“Last week,” Susan continued, “our Girl of the Year called
and she had to go into the doctor and so we delayed our first appointments for the
Man of the Year/Woman of the Year campaign for a week until our Girl of the
Year could hear back from her doctors. She just heard back from her
doctors, and her cancer has relapsed. She has been re-admitted to the
hospital and is going to need a bone marrow transplant. She still wants
to be Girl of the Year, but we told her she is going to need to save her
strength for her upcoming fight. I know this is last minute, but we were
thinking Charlotte would be a great Girl of the Year for next year. The
events start in February 2014, but we are preparing for it now ...”
As Susan explained, Charlotte as "Girl of Year" is
the person that the local Man of the Year contestants are fundraising in honor
of. She offers a personal face to motivate fundraisers. Her responsibilities
would be to attend a few parties, draw some pictures for thank you letters for
the fundraisers, and we share her story at the fundraising kick-off.
I told Susan I would need to talk to Charly and Sean first,
mostly Charly. She is sometimes hesitant to share her story with others.
However, when the lady in charge of the school fundraiser program asked
Charly if she could put Charly's picture on the school “Pennies for Patients” fundraising
posters, Charly smiled and nodded and said “SURE!” When she was asked if
she would be willing to come up during a school assembly if they came to her
school, she said “Okay!”.
This original “Girl of the Year” is undergoing my personal
fear for Charlotte. Relapse. Charly isn't home free until she has
been off chemo for several years. On top of that, in the 2-inch binder
they gave us about cancer treatment when Charlotte was diagnosed, it cited the following
statistics “1 in 800 adults develop a 2nd cancer within 8 to 10 years after
treatment for their original cancer. The 2nd cancer is a result of the
chemotherapy used to kill the primary cancer. The risk of developing a 2nd
cancer for children is not yet known, but it may be as high as 1 in 50 or as
low as the adult risk as 1 in 800.” Thinking about this unknown girl makes my
stomach knot.
Charlotte and I spoke in the car driving home from swim
lessons. Charlotte first said NO! I don't want everybody to know
about me. When I asked about her saying yes to her photo being used for
the “Pennies for Patients” fundraiser for local schools, she said that was
different, it was just school and not "the public". That made
me smile. I told her to wait for her final answer until we read the
email Susan was sending me with the details of what was expected of her.
"Mom" Charly asked, "How does showing my
picture make money for cancer?"
I explained that her picture motivates people to
donate. They know little kids are
receiving help from the money they are donating and are successfully combating
cancer. They can see how it saves lives like hers.
Then she asked about how the virus kills cancer. It’s times like this I think how smart she
is. Charly was talking about the video
they showed at the fundraiser last week, where the LLS showed research they are
funding. The video showed a little girl,
bald with a feeding tube up her nose.
The doctor in charge of the research relating that the child knew she
was dying and was resolved and calm about it. The parents were willing to try
anything to save her, so they signed her up for this study. With the study, they injected the girl with genetically
modified AIDS virus, programmed to attack tumors. The little girl became very sick. It came to the point where the doctors were
sure she wouldn’t make it through the night.
Then her fever broke and she started to improve. Tests were showing that the virus was killing
the cancer. LLS has committed to raise
millions of dollars to support further research using this technology to combat
cancer. The final minute was of the little
girl, smiling with her hair growing back, saying she has been improving
constantly and everyone is anticipating a positive outcome. It was a powerful video - to watch, click this link:
We talked over the video, and I explained that the
fundraiser campaign was important to LLS to help raise money for research on
cures like the one we saw. I told Charly
that Susan said it raised $220,000 last year in our region. “Mom!” she exclaimed, “I better do it, then
we could make our fundraising goal!” I
double-checked that she knew the money wasn’t coming to us but the LLS, and it
would be separate from the Light the Night campaign. You could almost hear the eye-roll in her
voice, “Mom, I KNOW, you told me that.”
I told her again to wait until we got home and read the email from Susan
about what it would entail.
According to the email, it’s attending 5 parties and drawing
some pictures. Having her bio and
picture used. We may be invited to the
individual fundraising events by the campaign participants, but we are not
obligated to attend. After some reading
this to Charly, she still agreed. Sean was okay with it, but asked if we should
let the hospital know, because maybe they’d give her better medicine. (insert my eye roll here)
Here’s a description of the Man/Woman of the Year program I
found online, if you are interested, it also shows the role of “Boy of the Year”
and “Girl of the Year”. It is my
understanding that the campaign is broken up into regions. Our region includes NM, UT, and NV. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4Ctbyp2lWY
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