St. Patricks Day Cards

Caroline, one of the Vanderbilt Rally Team members, thought that it would be fun to make cards for the kids at Vanderbilt Children's for St. Patrick's Day. We decided to set a table outside of the entrance to the dining hall and get other students to help out. By the end of the night, I finally figured out how to draw a shamrock, and Tom was well on his way. ha ha. just kidding Tom. Great job Caroline.

~ Austin

Gabe's My Heart

When I started contacting people in Nashville, the director of Gild's Club, a cancer support group, told me about Lu Sips and her son Gabe. In 2002, Gabe was the first baby born in Nashville, and since that time, his life has had an incredible impact on other childhood cancer patients at Vanderbilt Children's. Just after his first birthday, he was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma and had to undergo chemotheropy. During his treatment, his mother Lu took one of his favorite stuffed animals and created a wonderful teaching tool: "chemo-duck." She gave the duck a bandana, an IV port, and a pair of hosptial scrubs. Soon other families at the hospital started asking Lu about "chemo-duck", and she started making them for other children going through treatment. Within a few months, the demand was so high that Lu decided to start a non-profit called Gabe's My Heart dedicated to provided this teaching tool for parents and children going through cancer treatment. When one little boy at Vanderbilt recieved his, he gave it a big hug and said, "Look mom, he's sick like me!"


I met Lu and Gabe a few weeks ago, and we are planning on meeting again this Friday to discuss ways that we can team up this summer. Currently "chemo-ducks" are only available in a few hospitals, and we think that it would be great to donate a few "chemo-ducks" to each hospital that we visit this summer.

~ Austin

To read more about Gabe's story, click here

Amelia May

In each city, we are riding in honor of local kids with cancer. Here is the story of Amelia, a little girl in Nashville whose mother, Yvonne, just contacted me last week. We've been emailing back and forth, and we are hoping to get together soon so that Tom and I can meet Amelia. Yvonne was nice enough to share their story with us:

Amelia was diagnosed with Retinoblastoma, a cancer of the eye, in June of 2005 at the age of 3 1/2. What we first thought was pink eye or "allergy" eyes was actually glaucoma and redness from the pressure of the tumor growing in her eye. By the time we knew she had cancer, it had already taken the sight in her eye and the only was to keep it from spreading was to enucleate [remove] her affected eye. Her other eye remains healthy, and her cancer did not move so far that she needed chemotherapy, which was a huge blessing. She will need close and continuous follow ups for many years to keep her healthy and protect the vision in her healthy eye. Amelia will always need to wear glasses, too, to protect her healthy eye- they are purple which is very groovy. She knows she has "her Amelia eye, a Princess [prosthetic] eye, and Princess glasses" - because she is just like a princess when she wears them! At this writing, she loves Care Bears, Ponies, Veggie Tales, Thomas the Tank Engine, computers, going to the zoo, and sandwiches of any kind as long as they are cut into triangles.

~Austin