On August 12th I will run the 7 mile Falmouth Road Race to support One Mission.
This foundation, this mission, could not be closer to my heart.
Seven years ago I lived at Children’s Hospital Boston with my first child Elliot for nearly five consecutive months after he was diagnosed with Infant ALL (Leukemia). When I say, I “lived” at the hospital I mean that literally. I woke up in our Sudbury home one rainy November morning concerned about our tiny baby boy, started at the pediatrician’s office and didn’t come back. Family brought us clothes in a bag, took our dog and locked up the house.
Elliot was 3 months old. He had a cancer no one, including the several doctors in our family, knew existed. Infant ALL is so rare and so deadly that there are relatively few cases, and even fewer survivors. It was because Elliot was so sick and tiny that outpatient treatment was not an option. My only choice was to make the oncology floor my new home.
I met Ashley and Ari Haseotes in those halls filled with terrified parents. Like us, they were forced to live for six months with their baby boy Nicholas. After their own agonizing course and Nicholas’ final remission, they wasted no time in starting One Mission to make a difference to families like both of ours.
One Mission’s goal is to alleviate the enormous physical, emotional and financial stress that families face when put in this impossible position. When a hospital becomes your new home, there are a million ways life gets rough. One Mission helps support many programs geared toward alleviating the burden of living inpatient- pet therapy, sibling support, parking compensation, weekly take out dinners for families, to name a few. I can tell you after 100 days of breakfast, lunch and dinner at the cafeteria and Au Bon Pain, those pizza parties are a welcomed treat.
Something so simple can make a huge difference. Ashley and Ari know this.
Elliot turns seven this summer. Six years have not erased the memory of living in the hospital the first summer of his life…wheeling little Elliot and his IV pole through the Childrens Hospital garden for breakfast, seeing David off to work right from his shower in our tiny, sometimes shared hospital room, taking my one break of the day to walk across Longwood avenue for a coffee.
There are families living at Children’s right now who won’t take their children home with them this summer. There won’t be beach trips, Cape vacations, runs down the water slides, squeals of glee by lake’s edge.
Though my summer isn’t a carefree one by any stretch our family is at home together. I take my running shoes from my own front closet.
Please support my run for One Mission and make a difference this summer.
( visit onemission.org )
Thank you for ANY sized donation you can make!