Sat. May 21st
Today marks the 3 year anniversary since one of our local B+ Heroes, Erin Brennan, went to Heaven. I will never forget seeing Erin ask her parents’ permission to come over and give Ali a hug in 3C North at A.I. duPont Hospital. It was a beautiful moments for two beautiful girls. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Brennans today and everyday.
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Going from one extreme to the other, last night, we had the privilege of attending B+ Hero, Sydney Lysinger’s “I beat cancer” party (I’m not sure if that was the actual name! 🙂
I remember it like it was yesterday when I visited Sydney’s house shortly after her Hodgkins Lymphoma diagnosis. She was in the summer between 8th grade (Our Lady of Fatima) and high school (St. Mark’s). Now, Sydney is the picture of health as she is wrapping up her Junior year at St. Elizabeth’s HS in Wilmington, DE. Boy, I wish we could attend more parties like this. Dan, Lisa, Ally, Syd – congratulations and thank you for being role models.
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Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend a B+ event last night at North Star Elementary School in Hockessin, DE. As part of their fundraising for The B+ Foundation, they held “North Star Movie Night”. Thank you Beth Woodall and all of the teachers and 5th graders for organizing this event. I’m sure it was a fun night.
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As you know, The Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation has three main priorities:
Assist families of children all over the country (43 states so far)
Fund childhood cancer research
Spread the B+ Movement
Rather than introducing you to a “Featured Family of the Week” today, I’d like to address an objective that I don’t report on too frequently — the funding of childhood cancer research. As you hopefully know, the federal government (NCI) devotes less than 4% of their research funding to childhood cancer research. Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and the American Cancer Society fare even worse with less than 2% and less than 1%, respectively, allocated to helping our kids from a research investment.
Your Foundation awarded a $250,000 back in 2009 to help fund a High Throughput Screening (HTS) device – a robot basically. The HTS machine can greatly accelerate the drug discovery process by analyzing chemical compounds in a few days when that same work would take a few YEARS for a bench scientist. This may help us develop “smart” chemo that would attack only the bad cells and not eliminate the child’s (or adult’s) entire natural immune system. As you may recall, after the first round of chemo, Andrew had no “blasts” (leukemia cells) in his marrow or blood. But, because he had no natural defense system, he contracted a terrible fungal infection. This fungal infection was our biggest enemy in the hospital.
I am pleased to report that we are about to embark on the awarding of another research grant. Once again, we will award $250,000 following the review of a national Request for Proposal (RFP) from cancer research facilities all across the country (and world, for that matter). In keeping with the spirit of the consortium of childhood cancer fighting organizations that Bob Piniewski (PAC2), Andy Mikulak (Max’s Ring of Fire), and I assembled in DC in March, I have reached out to PAC2 to get their guidance on who should receive the RFP because some of those folks are closer to the cutting edge research than I. The actual selection of the award recipient will be made by the Board of The B+ Foundation. I promise you that we will select a very worthy and passionate scientist(s) to receive OUR support.
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The 5th Annual B+ Fighting Childhood Cancer 5k Run/Walk is less than a month away. PLEASE create a team, join a team, or sign up as an individual participant at:
https://www.elleevance.com/BPos2011/EventLandingPage.aspx
The key to the fundraising success of this program is for you to take just one minute and forward the solicitation email (already written; can be found on team page) to at least 10 people. Not only does this help us raise money but it spreads the B+ message around the country and helps us increase awareness to help children with cancer.
We’ve got a long way to go to hit $120k . Please sign up today and send out those emails. Thanks.
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Finally, so much has been written and spoken about “Judgement Day” today – May 21st. My 2 cents (and that really is all it’s worth!) – did I think that the world was going to end today? No, can’t say that I did. But, I will give the “Judgement Day” folks credit for stimulating discussion. And, I can’t say that I disagree that today is a “Judgement Day”…and tomorrow and the day after etc. While I didn’t expect the world to end, I think we are ‘judged’ every day…by God, in my opinion. It’s probably a very healthy thing to view each day as a “Judgement Day” so that we try to be the best people we can be with the gift that God has given us – another day. As I have often asked audiences when I speak, when you lay your head on the pillow tonight, did you make a difference in the life of at least one person today?
Live Like Andrew – give more than you get.
B+
Ali and Andrew’s Dad