Some may never see such a delicacy.
A good friend spends his Thanksgiving morning delivering food to families in need.
My wish for him was that he ran out of families in need before he ran out of food.
Think about that when you go back for seconds. Some people don’t get firsts.
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Tout. Todo. Tutto.
Any guesses?
What do you do when there is a language barrier preventing you from communicating with your customer? You eliminate the barrier.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital has this special phone. Say you are a family from a foreign country and your child has just begun treatment. The doctor doesn’t speak your native tongue.
No problem.
Thanks to one of St. Jude’s valued partners, you pick up one handset and the doctor picks up the other. The software translates the conversation so the barrier disappears.
¿Quién hubiera pensado que sería tan fácil
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Sheila Diane Gammage (October 25, 1974 – January 1, 1993)
The C word. The big C. Specifically, it’s ALL – acute lymphoblastic leukemia – a disease that in 1964 had a survival rate of 4 percent. Today, thanks to research and technological advances, that number has soared to a 94 percent survival rate.
Let me introduce you to Sheila. Sheila was a bright light in an imperfect world. In the tributes written about her following her death, they all mentioned her smile. It was infectious. A couple of months before she passed I was able to visit her. She was still smiling even though the blood vessels in her mouth kept bursting, giving her a red blood-stained smile. She was pretty weak and stayed in bed a lot. But she still smiled. Leukemia took her life but not her spirit.
Here is a quote from her mom that describes Sheila’s fight:
She tried everything humanly possible to stay here on the Earth, to not give up the fight against her greatest adversary–Leukemia. She fought SO much longer than anyone else would have. She went through her transplant trying to stay here for us, but when the time came, she was so ready to go onto Heaven, to obtain the reward for being the light she was.
Cancer is an ugly disease. It doesn’t know the difference between a rock star and a soccer mom. It doesn’t discriminate between an 80-year-old or an 8-week-old. It doesn’t care if you’re the richest of the rich or the poorest of the poor.
Today is Sheila’s birth anniversary. This also coincides with the start of the St. Jude Thanks and Giving Campaign. In honor of my cousin, Sheila, I am setting my personal goal at $1500. This will provide one IV chemotherapy treatment for a child.
The mission at St. Jude is simple . . .
The mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is to advance cures, and means of prevention, for pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment. Consistent with the vision of our founder Danny Thomas, no child is denied treatment based on race, religion or a family’s ability to pay.
Pray. Volunteer. Donate. Until a cure is found.
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Please don’t look back and judge me based on the number of posts I’ve made over the last few months.
I still thought about it all the time. Every day even.
Then life came along. And I lost focus.
Here’s to staying focused. Dream big dreams. It’s never to late to follow them.
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1950’s. Memphis, Tennessee. With a baby on the way, Danny Thomas brought together members of the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC) in order to fund the day-to-day operations of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital – a place that was designed to treat catastrophic illnesses affecting children.
The survival rate for most childhood cancers was less than 20 percent when St. Jude opened its doors in 1962. Today, that number is 80 percent. Thanks in part to donations from you and me, together we can make that number climb higher.
Over the next 3 months I will be sending out some not so subtle reminders about the mission of Danny Thomas and St. Jude and how you can help. You may have charitable organizations and families in your own community that you would rather support. And for that I applaud you. But, even if it’s just a little, we can do more.
So I ask for your patience and kindness. If you would like to contribute, you may contact me privately at [email protected] and I will send you a link where you can make a contribution. 100 percent of all monies I collect go directly to St. Jude to help offset their daily operating costs of approximately $1.8 million.
Even if you cannot contribute monetarily, please say a prayer for the children.
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