The 25-year-old singer gave $50,000 (£32,417) to an 11-year-old fan currently undergoing leukemia treatment on Tuesday evening, after discovering that her six-to-ninth month stay in hospital would mean she would miss Swift’s concert in August.
The family of Naomi Oakes, from Arizona, set up a crowdfunding website after discovering her diagosis of acute myelogenous leukaemia at the end of June.
Her medical bills, her uncle wrote on the page, came to $2,000 within the first 48 hours of her first visiting the doctor, and they were hoping to raise $30,000 in charitable donations to cover the bills for Oakes’ treatment.
Swift made three $15,000 donations and one of $5,000, along with the message: “To the beautiful and brave Naomi, I’m sorry you have to miss it, but there will always be more concerts. Let’s focus on getting you feeling better. I’m sending the biggest hugs to you and your family.”
It’s likely that Swift saw the video Oakes’ family made, which showed how the little girl had chosen the singer’s latest single Bad Blood as her ‘fight song’.
Category Archives: Pediatric Cancer
Pharoah’s jockey, Victor Espinoza, donates percentage of earnings to fight childhood cancer
Some people believe there is unfairness in the way the Triple Crown is run. You also could argue that it is unfair to consider a jockey a loser for falling short in the Belmont Stakes after he has won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. Victor Espinoza, though, thinks the unfairness that really matters is any that deprives a child of a fair shot at life.
For years, the jockey who hopes to ride American Pharoah into history Saturday has been determined to do something about the latter. He donates 10 percent of everything he wins to City of Hope, a cancer research and treatment center in Duarte, California — near Espinoza’s home, and not really all that far from the dairy farm in Mexico on which he grew up as the second youngest of 12.
No one in his family suffered from childhood cancer and no one instructed him to tithe. “I just saw one kid with that disease and that’s how I changed my life. I changed the way I think. Pretty much I changed everything,” he said. “For me, health is No. 1.”
Sen’Derrick Marks Takes Teen With Cancer To Prom, Helps Her Forget ‘Needles, Chemo’ For One Night
Khameyea Jennings made quite the entrance into her prom.
@senmarks drove her there in his lambo. pic.twitter.com/DQ09LvdGEs
— Jacksonville Jaguars (@Jaguars) May 3, 2015
When NFL player Sen’Derrick Marks partnered with the Dreams Come True program, he had just one goal: to “do something where you actually make someone’s day, to a make a difference in someone’s life.”
Over the weekend, the defensive tackle for the Jacksonville Jaguars fulfilled this promise by helping a teenager with cancer have a night she’ll likely never forget. He brought her, in great style, to prom.
Khameyea Jennings is an 18-year-old student at Frank H. Peterson Academies of Technology in Jacksonville, Florida. She was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2013.
Marks was connected to Jennings through Dreams Come True, a program that helps fulfill the wishes of children and teens in Florida who have life-threatening illnesses. Last week, Marks visited the teen at Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville to ask her one important question.
“I talked with your mom, she said it was OK,” Marks said to Jennings, an enormous bouquet of flowers in his arms. “I heard you had a prom this weekend and I wanted to know if I can take you to prom.”
The teen said “yes.”
On Saturday evening, Marks — bearing gifts for the teen, including a beautiful tiara — met her at her home. Together, they rode to prom in his Lamborghini.
“All I want to do is make sure she continues to smile and make sure she has a good time tonight,” Marks told WJAX-TV.
As they entered the venue, Marks pushing Jennings in a wheelchair, the duo were reportedly met with applause and cheers.
“She said this is a day to be normal, not to have to worry about needles, chemo, potassium levels,” the teen’s mom told the Florida Times-Union, “Just a day to be a teenager and enjoy the prom.”
On Monday, Marks shared a photograph of the memorable evening with his Twitter fans, and expressed awe at Jennings’ bravery.
Continue to fight and show others the Strenght and faith u have Khameyea. #angelonearth #khameyeajennings pic.twitter.com/dQauCcfkIs
— Sen'Derrick Marks (@senmarks) May 3, 2015
Young Fan With Cancer Moves The Rock To Tears
Send a Selfie
A lesson in compassion: Put a colorful Band-Aid on it
It’s never too early to learn about setting goals, and kindergartners at Norwood School in Bethesda set an ambitious goal for themselves: to collect 5,000 boxes of bandages for pediatric cancer patients at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington.
As part of a lesson on compassion — the private school’s value of the month for November — the students decided to collect the bandages for young patients being treated at the hospital, said kindergarten teacher Shannon van Yperen. And not just any bandages, but colorful, superhero, cartoon character, crazy design bandages — anything but plain old hospital bandages.
What they got was 7,130 boxes, which, when added to the boxes collected at Mater Dei School in Bethesda, totaled 10,000 boxes. Dr. Aziza T. Shad, chief of pediatrics at Georgetown’s Lombardi Comprehensive Care Center, accepted the bandages during an all-school assembly Friday at Norwood.
For the young patients who get needle sticks from injections or blood draws, a little thing like the opportunity to select a fancy bandage brings a lot of happiness, Shad told the children.
“Keep the spirit of giving,” she said. “That’s what is going to make you a wonderful, wonderful human being.”
Also at the assembly was Ryan Darby, a fifth-grader at Burning Tree Elementary School in Bethesda and a cancer survivor who was treated at Georgetown.
“I think it will make a huge difference, getting a [fancy] bandage,” Ryan said. “It might not seem like much, but it brings happiness.”
Kindergartner Ellery Camet, 6, said she brought in 30 boxes of bandages. She went to neighbors and her grandparents for help with donations.
“I was happy that I was collecting bandages for sick kids,” she said.
James Walters, 5, said he selected bandages with cars on them and some with Ninja Turtles. His classmate Henry Marriott, 5, chose to donate those with airplanes on them, and Sara Groban, 6, selected princess bandages.
“I thought compassion is getting bandages for people who are sick,” said Fionnuala Steuart, 5.
That was the lesson van Yperen hoped the students would learn from the collection drive.
“It’s kids helping kids,” she said. “It’s concrete.”
At Dulles Airport, kids fly United to the North Pole
Santa Claus usually does all the traveling, but this time, a group of kids flew from Dulles International Airport to the North Pole to meet the big guy himself.
Now in its 25th year, United Airlines offered a Fantasy flight for hundreds of children with serious diseases. Once in the air, the pilot reached a “top secret altitude” and warned kids to keep the window shades down.
Santa has a mystery passage to the North Pole that he wants to keep a secret from the Grinch.
“Basically, we’re going on a plane to the North Pole and then we’re going to meet Santa,” says Alex Green, 10, who is fighting pediatric cancer. “It makes me happy because, since I have cancer, I’m doing something fun and I can actually go to the North Pole.”
Alex’s mother, Jenny, says he was diagnosed with a Stage 4 Wilms’ Tumor when he was five years old.
“To see all these kids smiling, it’s emotional,” she says. “Pulling into the airport, I got teary eyed seeing all the volunteers that come together and make this happen. It’s wonderful.”
Kids walked through the “North Pole” terminal greeted by dozens of volunteers — including a band, Spongebob Squarepants, Elmo, The Racing Presidents, cheerleaders — and of course, Santa.
Denise Robinson-Palmer, base manager of flight attendants, says she looks forward to this “fantasy flight” every year.
“Today I was with a kid and I got a little choked up, so I had to walk away because this is not a time for us to get into that,” Robinson-Palmer says. “It’s a time to make them feel like today is the most wonderful day to them.”
Three-Year-Old Girl’s Selfless Donation Goes Viral
“To another little girl.”
That’s what 3-year-old Ariana of Winterport, Maine, said when her father Josh Smith asked where her donated hair was going to go.
It was then that the dad of two realized his toddler had a heart that was too big for words.
“I do a charity called Extra Life where I play video games to help raise money for kids,” he said. “Ariana happened to be sitting on my lap when a video played showing a little girl who was bald, lying in a hospital bed with tubes in her.”
When their daughter showed curiosity, Smith and his wife Crystal explained how medicine was what made the child in the video lose her hair.
“Without a second thought, Ariana said ‘Oh, well she can have some of my hair,’” Smith said. “That’s when my wife clued me in that they have these organizations where we could donate it.”
The Smiths chose “Locks of Love” to send Ariana’s generous gift to a child with medical hair loss.
A week later, Ariana was taken to the family hairdresser where 10 inches was cut from her hair.
“It was her first haircut,” Smith told ABC News. “She could be so selfless like that. Her first reaction is ‘How about I give up something that I have so a little girl can feel pretty’.
Smith posted his daughter’s moving gesture on his Imgur page, where it’s received almost 645,000 views in just two days.
“She’ll take an adult-like approach and it’s really amazing,” Smith said. “She is a typical little kid, but if she sees somebody in need, she certainly nurtures them. This made Ariana feel special and she’d definitely like to do it again.”
Tim Duncan donates $247,000 to fund ground-breaking San Antonio Cancer Genome Research Project
San Antonio Spur, Tim Duncan, through the Tim Duncan Foundation and Blackjack Speed Shop, has made a landmark donation of $247,000 to the San Antonio 1000 Cancer Genome Project, a Texas not-for-profit 501 (c) (3), Open Science research project launched in 2012 by START. Based in San Antonio, START’s mission is to accelerate the development of new anticancer drugs through Phase I research. With four clinic sites on three continents (the US, Spain and China), START is the largest provider of Phase I testing and treatment for patients with advanced cancer. START’s Phase I researchers can uniquely claim direct, hands-on involvement with the clinical development of 18 FDA approved anti-cancer drugs that are now in use by oncologists around the world.
The San Antonio 1000 Cancer Genome Project is a one-of-a-kind cancer genome research project that has theunprecedented support of more than 200 surgeons, oncologists, and cancer researchers from a broad spectrum of affiliations. This unparalleled collaboration is enabling researchers to step beyond the institutional barriers that currently fragment and piecemeal cancer research, and makes the San Antonio 1000 Cancer Genome Project the largest community-wide undertaking of its kind.
Through the support and involvement of these participating surgeons, START researchers are collecting fresh tumor tissue from 1000 patients with the 10 most common cancers in San Antonio. The project then aims to perform whole genome sequencing on both the cancerous and normal tissue from each patient. Then, for the first time anywhere, researchers will link this genetic information to the patient’s clinical outcomes. Most significantly, all data will be made available publicly at no cost to researchers worldwide. The project’s promise to make all data freely available is built on the belief that no single investigator or institution has all of the answers and encourages the involvement of outsiders who might bring fresh ideas to the urgent and complex problem of gene abnormalities and cancer.
Like most people, Tim Duncan has been touched personally by cancer, and hopes for a cure for cancer in his lifetime. Duncan says he was drawn to the San Antonio 1000 Cancer Genome Project, “because the information collected will ultimately be shared.”
“The idea that a group of cancer researchers were willing to set aside egos, to make the information freely available and work strictly for the greater good of curing cancer was exactly the type of cancer project I was willing to support,” Duncan said.
Barbara Bush’s heartache at losing her three-year-old daughter to leukemia
Talking to her granddaughter, Jenna Bush Hager, the former First Lady, 87, reveals the loss she and former President George H. W. Bush experienced
Barbara Bush, former first lady and grandmother to reporter Jenna Bush Hager, has spoken about losing her three-year-old daughter to leukemia over half a century ago.
In an intimate interview with Jenna, the 87-year-old reveals the heartache she and former President George H. W. Bush, who is called ‘gampy’, experienced after little Robin Bush, Jenna’s aunt, was diagnosed with only two weeks to live.
‘I was combing her hair and holding her hand,’ Mrs Bush recalled on Today. ‘I saw that little body, I saw her spirit go.’
Born on December 20th, 1949, Robin was the youngest of three brothers; and two years younger than her brother, and future 43rd President, George W. Bush.
Jenna said, referring to Robin, who would be 63 years old if she were still alive today: ‘Gampy actually said recently he hopes when he passes away that’s who he will see first.’
‘It is who he’ll see first,’ said Mrs Bush.
‘She was quiet and gentle, and she had lovely little blond curls,’ she added.
At age three, Mrs Bush began to notice her daughter’s energy waning, and took her to the doctor for a simple check-up.
She said: ‘She was listless, she didn’t want to do anything, just wanted to rest, go out and watch cars go by, so I called the doctor and said, “Can I bring Robin out? I think she has spring fever,” and the doctor sort of laughed.
‘We went out and she had a few bruises on her and the doctor took a blood test and said I’ll call you.
‘She told that is Robin had leukemia. “What do you do for leukemia?” Well, she said, “You don’t do anything. She’s going to die,” and we said, “No, I don’t think so”. And she said, “My advice is take her home, love her and in about two weeks she will be gone.”
Instead, the couple took Robin across America to a hospital willing to try treatment on a child.