If your heart cracks when you hear terrible stories about preschoolers having chemo when they should be having nothing but fun; if you think the teams of doctors and scientists working tirelessly to end childhood disease deserve the means to continue research and healing; if you plan on donating any funds whatsoever in support of charitable causes, then please consider acting in support of the people who are right now trying to confine to history one tragic, terrible fact: the fact that millions of kids still suffer debilitating, life-ending sickness. Please consider supporting St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.
There are so many great things about St. Jude’s, it’s difficult to pick where to begin…Let’s start with the burden of medical costs; an often crippling weight for so many patients. At St. Jude’s, patients pay nothing. Families are billed for not a single thing: food, housing, treatment, and travel; St. Jude’s provides all of these completely free of cost. St. Jude’s operates under the philosophy that the pain of seeing a suffering child is burden enough; so parents can concentrate all energy toward being there to see kids’ recovery through, St. Jude’s keeps services free.
St. Jude’s founder, Danny Thomas, famously dreamed of a world gone right, one where “no child should die at the dawn of life.” Since opening its doors on February 4, 1962, St. Jude’s has given us research of incredible amount and quality, gaining amazing progress toward turning Mr. Thomas’ dream real. Survival rates for childhood cancer have soared; in 1962, only 20% of kids pulled through; today over 80% of children now survive cancer. Thanks in large part to treatments developed at St. Jude’s, families of sick children today face a treatment narrative dramatically more promising than only a short time ago.
When St. Jude’s beneficiary Adrienne learned her one-year-old son, Bryce, was diagnosed with sickle cell disease, her world temporarily crumbled. “I was in panic mode, in shock,” Adrienne said. That all changed after the phone rang. It was St. Jude’s who called, accepting Bryce into a program of ongoing care for sickle cell disease.
Bryce, now 4, is happy and overflowing with life. He likes books, puzzles, and playing with his sister, Chloe. Unfortunately, a storybook ending isn’t the case for the countless children who fall sick and never grow up. But it can be. Every child should have hope, and a future. St. Jude’s relies on people just like you to keep its founder’s dream, and millions of children, alive.