Donors have a tremendous impact on the 290,000 patients cared for at the IWK each year. Funding needs change from year to year and the IWK must be in a position to respond quickly to the most urgent care priorities. We recently received a very generous donation from the employees at Ledcor. Jerry & John share why they chose to support the IWK.
Ledcor employees making a generous donation to support patients at the IWK.
On November 27th, we had the honor of presenting a cheque for $10,373.42 on behalf of the employees at Ledcor to the IWK Foundation in Halifax, the largest children’s hospital east of Montreal. For those of you who are not familiar with Ledcor, we started in Leduc, Alberta in 1947 and have since grown to become one of North America’s largest and most diversified construction companies.
Although our head office is located in British Columbia, many of our employees have ties to the Maritimes, and as a company we recognize the importance of supporting the communities where we live and work. Over the last ten years, , Ledcor has contributed over $23 million to charitable causes with a focus on supporting pediatric medical facilities and critical illness initiatives across North America.
Through our Ledcor Cares Employee Campaign, employees are encouraged to support causes that are meaningful to them through a variety of ways, including a payroll deduction program and other creative fundraising activities such as raffles, auctions, and 50-50 draws. What makes Ledcor’s campaign so special is the fact that Ledcor matches each dollar raised by employees, doubling the actual donation. Employees have the opportunity to have their donations go to their charity of choice, and of course, being Bluenosers, the IWK was our obvious choice.
IWK Foundation employee, Jeremy Godfrey with Jerry and John from Ledcor.
During our visit to the IWK, we were privileged to be given the opportunity to see a before and after tour of the emergency department and the recently upgraded operating rooms and facilities. The staff were friendly, helpful and spoke of the heart-felt appreciation for all donations whether big or small. It all adds up! It was a wonderful, enlightening but humbling experience and without doubt it has encouraged us to get the word out about supporting our local communities. As individuals and as a company, we look forward to having a long term relationship with the IWK. We wish the staff and patients the best of health and happiness in the future.
Jerry & John
Thank you so much to Ledcor and their employees for their support! To make a gift to the IWK Foundation visit www.iwkfoundation.org.
Music has the power to soothe and heal. For many individuals, music helps them cope with difficult situations and can often provide an outlet for stress and discomfort. The Music Therapy program as part of the IWK Child Life Program, uses music as the main avenue for working of health care and quality of life goals with patients and their families. Music therapy sessions involve music making, listening to music, and finding creative ways to incorporate music into a patient’s healing process – often without the patient or family having a musical background.
Studies have shown that through musical therapy patients’ stress levels are reduced, sensory and cognitive skills are developed, and there is an increase in self-confidence and self-esteem.
Thanks to the support of organizations like Long & McQuade, patients and families at the IWK have benefitted first hand from Darrel Cameron, the IWK Health Centre’s Music Therapist Accredited (MTA)”.
“We have truly enjoyed the music therapy with Darrel,” says dad Moe, whose son Andrew is currently being treated as an inpatient. Together, Darrel, Andrew and his dad often “jam” with Darrel and dad on the guitar and Andrew on a small drum or simulated drum kit.
“Andrew has several musical instruments at home and loves many types of music,” said dad. “This was very exciting and therapeutic for our son along with the rest of the family. Along with Darrel, we also wrote a song with several other family members which I truly found was a turning point for Andrew, as he got his joy back. Music therapy is a very worthwhile component of our son’s healing.”
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! I bet you’ve heard this song on the radio, in the malls, and even in your workplace by now. At the IWK Health Centre, December is truly the most wonderful time of the year. We know that being in hospital can be tough for kids and families, even more so around the holidays. Throughout the month of December, holidays are celebrated to ensure that patients and families who are in the hospital don’t miss out on traditions, making important memories and even celebrating new holidays!
Child Life Services works hard to make the holidays a memorable time for patients and families who are in the hospital. Through generous donations by individuals, families, community organizations and workplaces, Child Life Services ensures that inpatients and their siblings have gifts for the holidays. These items go beyond the holidays and are also used throughout the year for therapeutic play or distraction with a Child Life Specialist, as birthday presents for patients, and to support play in the hospital.
If you would like to donate a gift to patients and families at the IWK Health Centre this holiday season, please keep in mind the following guidelines:
All gifts must be new and unwrapped, in keeping with our infection control policy.
Please deliver these gifts to Child Life Services located on the main floor of the children’s building Monday – Thursday from 8 am-4 pm. Outside of this time, please leave gifts with Protection Services inside the Women’s Building entrance to the IWK and mark them Attention: Child Life.
Please see our Holiday Wish List for details about gifts appropriate for specific age groups.
This article was written by Lezlie Lowe for the Fall 2014/Winter 2015 issue ofIzaak Magazine – an in-depth, behind the scenes, all-access publication highlighting the incredible, everyday happenings at the IWK Health Centre. IWK Midwives make it possible for more families to welcome babies to the world safely at home.
Shelly Juurlink sits in her Fall River living room, pointing left, pointing right. There’s the spot on the floor where she laboured for eight hours in a birthing pool. There’s the spot the futon was set up, where her seven-pound, five-ounce boy slid out, under the care of Shelly’s husband, Perry Sankarsingh, and the couple’s doula and two IWK midwives.
“We christened this place,” Shelly says, laughing. “We were really happy we were able to do it here.”
After their son Lennon was born, Perry cooked breakfast for the whole team — coffee, eggs, toast and fresh mango.
Shelly rested, ate and nursed the baby while everyone hung out for a few hours, talking about the birth and debating what name this new little baby, who was not arriving home, but being home for the first
time, would be called.
“They helped make it a celebration,” says Perry of the midwives and doula.
This isn’t a birth the way many Nova Scotians picture it, and it’s one the IWK is happy that women in HRM are able to access.
Registered midwife, Erin Bleasdale, checks on baby Lennon just moments after he is born.
Midwife-attended births became a core part of IWK care when midwives were first registered by the province five years ago. IWK midwives’ scope of practice includes hospital births and home births,
both with a focus on low-intervention and relationships.
“We don’t get the outcomes we get because we have ‘registered midwife’ after our names,” says Shelly’s midwife, Kelly Chisholm. “We get the outcomes we get because we spend so much time with women.
We develop a trust.”
Chisholm and her colleagues remain in contact with some clients for years. (Almost on cue, a mom and new baby walk into the café where Chisholm and I are meeting. They hug, and coo over the baby, who’s nursing inside a Snugli. The scene is repeated with a different mom a few minutes later. Another former client walks by the window and waves enthusiastically).
“There’s barely a coffee shop I can go to without running into somebody,” says Chisholm, who has attended between 400 and 500 births. “It’s really nice.”
The 41-year-old’s story of deciding to go into midwifery has an unlikely setting indeed: she watched a mother sea turtle lay her eggs on a Guyanese beach as part of an overseas youth outreach trip during
university.
“They cry these big jelly tears and they moan. It’s beautiful. It’s amazing. I walked away from that and I was, like, I want to do that with human beings.”
IWK midwives conduct prenatal visits off site at a Dartmouth clinic that isn’t much like a clinic at all. “It’s set up so that women feel like they’re more in their living room,” Chisholm says.
There are chaises instead of exam tables and space for soon-to-be siblings to play. (A big bonus for Shelly, who needed to bring her two year- old daughter, Lilah, with her to her check-ups). Prenatal appointments last about 30 minutes. Some postnatal visits are conducted in the family home.
“In terms of a service experience,” says Perry, “it’s great for the family. We never had to pack up a little baby and go to the hospital for check-ups when he was two or three weeks old. They came there.”
Perry says home birth wasn’t even on his radar before he met Shelly. With their first baby, he says, it took some convincing. Now he’s a convert.
“Going to bed as a family two hours after you have given birth is a pretty great feeling.”
Another difference with the midwifery model is exceptional continuity of care, says IWK VP Patient Care, Jocelyn Vine.
In a family practice care model, women may have good continuity throughout their prenatal care, but when the day (or night) of delivery arrives, that woman’s physician may not be on call.
“Midwives are on call for one another,” says Vine, “but they work hard to ensure that the woman knows that other midwife in the case of her primary practitioner being busy. It’s partly the relationship you are able to form throughout the journey.”
Shelly was lucky to get into the IWK midwives’ care. She and Perry had moved to Nova Scotia from Ontario mid-pregnancy and were first with a midwife in Antigonish. They moved again to Halifax and happily made it onto Chisholm’s roster only a month before Lennon’s birth.
A little fewer than 10,000 babies a year are born in Nova Scotia, half of them at the IWK. Only one per cent are midwife-attended.
“It’s a very small subset,” says Vine, “but it could be bigger. Because the number of women who have normal, low-risk births is a fairly large group.”
The small number of midwife-attended births isn’t because the practice — which is a registered medical profession and thousands of years old — is an outlier. In fact, demand for midwifery services in HRM far outstrips the IWK’s resources.
Registered midwives Erin Bleasdale (L) and Kelly Chisholm (R) weigh baby Lennon.
Chisholm is one of six midwives (four full time and two part time) in a practice that takes in 16 to 20 women a month. Protocol requires a midwife and a second birth attendant at all births, so the program just hired five birth-unit nurses to act as home-birth attendants.
But that doesn’t change the demand for the service. “We could keep at least one or two more full-time midwives busy, starting tomorrow,” Chisholm says. Chisholm, who’s in her 14th year of “baby catching”, was self employed for a decade in B.C. and New Zealand before coming home to join the IWK. But she feels strongly about hospital affiliation.
“We needed to be a part of the IWK when we became registered, because that was how buy-in was going to take place in terms of all the other professions. The public has a huge amount of respect for the IWK, so it gave us the credibility instantly.”
Sanction, it turns out, has been a two-way street. Births at the IWK run the gamut from those following the most healthy low-risk pregnancies, to the most complicated highrisk situations.
Jocelyn Vine says the IWK has a strong record when it comes to low-intervention birthing for low-risk pregnancies. But the midwives, she says, “have helped ground us in that practice. I think we were good before. But we are better now.”
Low intervention was exactly what Shelly wanted and midwifery was her chosen road to get there. Her daughter, Lilah, was born at home with the assistance of a midwife in Guelph. Even with her first pregnancy, she didn’t have any reservations about delivering at home. Trust in the home-birth process,
Shelly says, stems from trust in the midwives.
Perry admits he was concerned about the what-ifs, more with this birth than with their first. In Guelph, the couple were three minutes by car from the hospital. Here, the IWK is half an hour away on Hwy. 118.
Erin Bleasdale (L) and Kelly Chisholm (R) join mom Shelly Luurlink and doula Wanda Cox in welcoming baby Lennon in the family’s home.
The midwives reassured him that signs of trouble emerge early enough that they can do a transfer of care in time from anywhere in HRM if that’s what’s needed (up to 30 minutes from the IWK). Also, Chisholm and her colleagues don’t take women into their practice whose pregnancies are likely to need hospital care, based on a specific list of medical exclusions.
Shelly was a healthy 35-year-old on her second low-risk pregnancy. Chisholm had no reservations. “We have this general feeling,” Perry says, “that science will save us. So, it’s very natural for people, when they are having children, to want to have the best care available. So they look to hospitals. But I think that we have made pregnancy into an illness as opposed to a natural process.”
Perry doesn’t discount the need for hightech care in complicated pregnancies. But when it’s appropriate, he says, midwifery should be available.
“I realize that we were lucky to have had the experience we had,” he says. “Not everybody has that experience. Shelly’s labour was pretty routine, uneventful. So we felt pretty safe.”
Chisholm, for her part, is eternally sanguine. “I get to be with people during one of the best times of their lives,” she says more than once, almost amazed at the truth of it. “And I get paid to do it.”
This article was written by Lindsey Bunin for the Fall 2014/Winter 2015 issue of Izaak Magazine – an in-depth, behind the scenes, all-access publication highlighting the incredible, everyday happenings at the IWK Health Centre. World-leading IWK immunization expert, Dr. Noni MacDonald, shares insight on a complex and timely topic.
The digital age in which we live has greatly changed the way we gather and process information. If we have a question these days, most of us just “Google it!”
While the convenience of immediate information can suit our desire for instant gratification, it’s not necessarily the most accurate approach. This is especially true when it comes to the often-controversial topic of vaccines.
Dr. Noni MacDonald is a professor of pediatrics at Dalhousie Medical School with an appointment in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the IWK Health Centre, and her expertise has afforded her opportunities to teach and practice in countries around the world. One of MacDonald’s major research interests is vaccines, particularly in the areas of safety, hesitancy, pain mitigation and policy issues. She is a key member of the research team at the Canadian Center for Vaccinology at the IWK, has published more than 300 papers on such topics and has long been recognized in Canada as an advocate for child and youth health and as a leader in pediatric infectious disease.
In an effort to help clarify vaccination information for families, MacDonald has provided insight into some commonly asked questions.
Aren’t my children safe if everyone else’s children are vaccinated?
“Some vaccines work better when everyone is vaccinated,” MacDonald says. “This is called ‘herd’ or ‘community’ immunity. If everyone is vaccinated for measles, for example, the virus will stop circulating. However, herd immunity doesn’t work for other diseases, such as tetanus, because the tetanus bacteria are in the environment, in soil and dust.
“Besides, you don’t know if everyone around you is vaccinated, and people travel far and wide in our mobile society. You’re taking a huge risk if you’re depending on everyone else to be vaccinated to protect you or your child from measles, for example.”
Aren’t vaccines only for infants and children?
“Most vaccines are for infants and children because there is no natural protection from many serious vaccine-preventable diseases such as pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria, measles, some strains of influenza, meningitis, etc. While a mother transfers some of her antibodies to the infant during pregnancy, these do not last very long after the baby is born. Similarly, the antibodies in breast milk are not enough to protect the infant from many of these diseases.
“An increasing number of vaccines are being developed for adults so they will be protected into old age, the shingles vaccine is one example. It’s also been proven that immunizing adults can help protect infants and children. For example, re-immunizing adults (a booster) for whooping cough prevents infected adults from passing this terrible disease to infants: parents and grandparents take note!
Wouldn’t natural immunity be better?
“Immunity induced by vaccines is effective and much safer than natural infection.
Vaccination is a better choice because it avoids the risk of getting some terrible disease complications, like brain damage with measles, deafness with mumps, death with tetanus and pertussis, and more,” MacDonald explains. “We’re also learning more about boosting childhood vaccinations with repeat vaccinations later in life, to ensure immunity doesn’t wane as we get older.”
Now that major illnesses have largely disappeared, we really don’t need vaccines anymore, do we?
“The success of vaccines makes it appear that many infectious diseases have disappeared, but sadly that’s not true,” she clarifies. “There are outbreaks of measles and whooping cough throughout North America, and a resurgence of polio in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Vaccination rates must be very high (over 90 per cent) to stop the spread of these viruses and bacteria, so when not enough people are vaccinated outbreaks can occur. Today, people travel far and wide and may not be aware that they’re not just bringing luggage with them.”
Do vaccines cause autism and other disorders?
“Vaccines do not cause autism. The increased rates of autism are in part the result of changes in the way the condition is assessed or recognized. Autism is known to be a genetic disorder with other contributing factors, but vaccines are not a factor. There is no proof that vaccines cause autism or any other diseases, like multiple sclerosis, but
there’s plenty of proof that vaccines prevent very serious infectious diseases.”
Is it true that vaccines have damaging and long-term side effects that are yet unknown?
“Vaccines have been used over many decades in millions of people around the world.
Extensive global networks track reactions to vaccines known as ‘adverse events following immunization,’ to find out which events are due to vaccine, and which are just coincidence (not caused by vaccine).
“There are now many years of data that prove the safety of vaccines. The global networks alert health professionals to any new concerns about a vaccine. The most commonly reported reaction is a sore arm. The risks of serious complications from contracting diseases like measles, whooping cough and hepatitis are much more common and can be far more serious than any adverse event from a vaccine.”
Why don’t we consider vaccine preventable childhood illnesses as just an unfortunate fact of life?
“They used to be, and millions of children died from diseases that are now prevented
with vaccination,” MacDonald says. “Thousands of children still suffer from these diseases because they don’t have access to the range of vaccines we have in North America. We’re privileged to live in a country where so much serious illness, disability and death can be prevented with a few doses of vaccine”
Can’t the flu vaccine give you the flu or make you sick?
“The flu vaccine cannot give you the flu. The flu virus used in the vaccine is killed or broken when the vaccine is manufactured. The flu vaccine is given when many flu-like illnesses are already circulating in the population so, if you get sick following your flu shot, it isn’t from one of the infl uenza strains contained in the vaccine. The ‘real’ influenza is a very serious illness and not to be confused with a cold or stomach illness.”
Do you think the flu vaccine is really effective?
“Influenza is a very sneaky virus that changes its outer coat every year. This is why a new version of influenza vaccine has to be made and given each year. Sometimes the experts are able to make the vaccine match well to the new influenza strain, other times the match is not so good. When the match is spot on, the vaccine is very effective; when it is less well matched, it is less effective BUT still far better protection than if no influenza vaccine is taken.
“Antivirals and other off -the-shelf medications are not very effective against influenza, so the treatment for influenza is simply bed rest and lots of fluids. Influenza is quite contagious. If you’re not protected by vaccine when exposed to someone incubating or having influenza, you easily become infected and then spread it to others who are not immunized in your family, at work, at school, etc. For many people, the extreme fatigue from influenza is very debilitating and disruptive to their lives, even if they do not get one of the more serious complications. It’s so much easier to just get a flu shot.”
This story and many exciting others are available for FREE though the online version of Izaak magazine.
Have you ever wondered what IWK stands for? Officially “Izaak Walton Killam Health Centre” but to me it means, “Investing in Wonderful Kids”. It is a truly inspiring place that we, as Maritime parents, treat as an insurance policy – we want to have it if we need it but hope to never have to use it. At least that was our philosophy until the day we needed it and our appreciation for the IWK became a reality.
That day came for us shortly after Ben’s fourth birthday. Our healthy active boy came down with a cold. It was just a cold, not so bad as to require medical attention but enough of a cold to keep him home from daycare. Then, little purple dots appeared all over his body and this Mommy went into panic mode. We went to see his family doctor immediately. Those purple dots were petechiae – an indication of low platelets which a blood test confirmed. We were admitted to the Prince Country Hospital in Summerside, PEI.
It was here that Ben was given his first round of IVIG (intravenous immunoglobulin – a plasma protein replacement therapy that is given to immune deficient patients who have decreased antibody production capabilities) to help boost his platelet count. During this transfusion he had a reaction and the transfusion had to be stopped. This was the day our relationship with the IWK began through consultation with our local hospital. When Ben’s numbers failed to rebound we were sent to the IWK for an appointment with hematology and for bone marrow testing. Bone marrow results revealed that everything was working fine and because of his history of reacting to the treatment we again decided to give his body time to repair.
As time went on his platelet numbers failed to increase. He underwent another bone marrow test and consult with oncology. The results once again revealed that his bone marrow was working perfectly fine. Next we were sent to immunology. Here his immunologist, hematologist and oncologist thoroughly tested Ben for every possible cause. All of these tests resulted in a diagnosis – Ben suffers from autoimmune conditions called thrombocytopenia and neutropenia. Ben has had bone marrow testing, ultrasounds, MRIs, x-rays, blood work, and even dental checks at the IWK to ensure his health is being fully and continuously monitored.
While his team hasn’t been able to isolate the cause of his condition they have safely and confidently found a way to manage his platelet count which allows him to run and play!
So why should we give to the IWK? The answer is simple; you don’t know when you are going to get a phone call saying that the specialists there want to see you the next morning. You never know what lies ahead for you, your family or friends. Having a facility that focuses on children and all their intricacies in our region is worth supporting.
Please consider supporting the upcoming IWK Radiothon on 95.1 FM CFCY presented by Credit Unions and the Co-operators Agents of PEI.
Extra Life is a 24hr gaming marathon where funds raised help sick and injured children at Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. As a proud Children’s Miracle Network member hospital, the IWK Health Centre receives all funds raised in the Maritimes.Amanda Matthews shares how Extra Life, and video games, have made a difference in her family’s life.
Last year, when we first found out about the Extra Life fundraiser, we were ecstatic. Not only is it a fun way to raise funds and awareness, but it was also something that was very close to our hearts. We’re a family of Gamers, it’s what we love to do together. Whether it’s Monopoly, Candy Land, World of Warcraft, or Peggle, we love to game together as a family. It’s also how Blake regained the use of his hands and legs so quickly.
Blake
Blake had a brain tumor in his posterior fossa, the part of the brain that controls movement, balance and coordination. We were warned that the pressure from the tumor, as well as the surgery to remove it might cause him to have balance and fine motor issues, as well as a number of other issues. Blake was not lucky. After he recovered from surgery, he could not walk very well and spent most of his time in a wheelchair. He was right handed before surgery and after, he could not use his right hand very well. He’s now left handed.
He spent a lot of time in Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy to help regain the use of his legs and hands, as well as his balance. However, being weak from radiation therapy and surgery, the level of therapy needed to regain those skills couldn’t be reached. His therapists did however, realize that he liked to play games, and so, they began using video games as part of his therapy – including Wii bowling and soccer, Nintendo DS and other handheld games. Blake struggled. Boy did he struggle. It was sometimes hard to sit through those therapy sessions and watch him get so angry with himself for not being able to do something that he knew how to do a month before. He tried so hard.
Playing games in his hospital room.
His determination, and the kindness and patience of his therapists paid off. Through the use of handheld games like the Nintendo DS, he regained much of his fine motor skills. You can’t defeat Bowser with one hand. You can’t beat Naiomi at soccer sitting down. Through games and a tough sense of competition, today, he is able to walk without anyone noticing that he has balance issues. He can write his name finally. He can out play almost anyone at Mario Kart.
Games were his safe place. During treatments and hospital stays and all the bad times, he had his games to cheer him up and keep him happy. He had his nurses play with him, Child Life workers play with him, and he had Mom and Dad (who he ALWAYS beat) to play with him, be with him, comfort him.
Extra Life is important. Not just because we love video games, not just because they helped our boy through the toughest fight of his life, but because it helps save lives. In 2013, Extra Life players raised 4 million dollars for Children’s Miracle Network hospitals. Money that pays for life saving equipment, research and maybe some video games 😉
Join us on Saturday, October 25th. We’ll be gaming our hearts out for the IWK Health Center in Halifax. That’s our miracle hospital.
Sign-up today at www.extra-life.org to take part in this 24hr gaming marathon in support of the IWK.
We spent many days and many hours in the IWK Health Centre’s NICU, surrounded by an incredible team of nurses, doctors, social workers, etc. We were included on our girl’s daily rounds, we were taught how to show our love to babies that were in incubators, on ventilators, with oxygen probes, feeding tubes, IV’s, and heart rate monitors. We were taught how to change diapers on such tiny little bums. We experienced one of the most precious moments of a parent’s life in the NICU…kangaroo care.
We spent 124 days at the IWK, the first two weeks I was on strict bed rest, the next month felt like a roller coaster ride with many ups and downs. We prayed every day that someday we could take our girls home…Someday never came…on our 124th day, we left the hospital with only one baby carrier.
We left the IWK feeling incredibly empty. Lost. Broken-hearted. But at the same time, we felt gratitude. Love. Thankful. Our loss will never be forgotten, just as the support and care we received during a most difficult time will never be forgotten.
The IWK 5K – In Memory of Jessica, which takes place on Telethon Sunday every year, was created to commemorate our daughter and at the same time show our gratitude for the care we received for our girls at the IWK and also the support to myself and my husband after our daughter passed away. In 5 years we raised over $95,000, with every year growing exponentially. This money was raised several different ways, but the easiest and most significant way was through the IWK’s online fundraising tool – Friends Asking Friends.
Friends Asking Friends allows you to create your own personal fundraising page for the IWK Telethon for Children. By creating a personal page with our story and pictures through this free site, I was able to share my fundraising goals on social media and email it to friends and family from away who were unable to participate at the event. The more personal your page is, the more you will touch people’s hearts which ultimately helps raise vital dollars to ensure maritime families receive world class specialized care. Please help support this year’s IWK Telethon for Children and create your own personal fundraising page through the Friends Asking Friends website. You will be surprised how easy it is, and how quickly your goals will be reached!
The Sears National Kids Cancer Ride is one of the biggest and most ambitious charity cycling events on behalf of childhood cancer in the world. Jenn Allaert from Moncton, New Brunswick, shares why she’s riding across Canada to improve the quality of life for children, and their families, living with and beyond cancer.
20 years ago I watched my mom getting sick. No one knew why and answers were hard to come by. A year later her brain tumor was remove a month to the day after my 16th birthday. The relief was brief, 3 months later my Nona was diagnosed with brain cancer. The out come not in our favour this time, her presence left us 4 months later. Life was definitely not fun that year…it was far from a sweet 16.
Now that I’m a mom I know what the meaning of giving everything for you kids is. A fighting chance to be a kid. I will fight for them and fight for all the kids. I now have the reason I’m riding with me forever…it will never be forgotten.
My life changed when I was asked to be the massage therapist of the 2008 & 2009 SNKCR riders. I really had no idea how much that experience would have on my life or even the big realization of why I was doing it. I strongly believe that this is bigger than me; it’s something I have to do. I do it because I can, because I have 3 beautiful children and I can’t image my life without them. I can’t image waking up one day and someone telling me that my kids have caner. These are the words no parent should ever have to hear.
Many of my adult family members have lost their battle with cancer. It was so hard to watch their changes in health from all the countless treatments. And within my massage practice I see the emotional and physical impact cancer has on it’s survivors and think that no child should ever have to experience that. All children need to have positive touch experiences in their life and none should come from countless needle pokes and invasive treatments.
Everyday I carry the words I heard form a little girl with cancer “Mommy don’t be sad, it’s not that bad I only have cancer.” It was so heartbreaking to hear these words because the children with cancer are living adult lives…not the life of a child
So here is to all the kids out there. We will beat cancer. We will be strong like you. And you’re never alone; we’re with you until the end. You’re forever in my heart!!!
Stephanie Reid is the Program Lead, Marketing Strategy at the IWK Foundation and a member of the runDisney community.
Have you ever considered running a race but never had the right motivation? Are you an avid runner looking for a new challenge? Have you been looking for an exciting and unique way to support the IWK Foundation? If you answered yes to any of these questions then this is the blog post for you.
Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals® is the presenting sponsor and celebratory charity of the Disney Princess Half Marathon Weekend at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. Funds raised for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals in conjunction with this magical event will help kids grow up happily ever after. Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals raises funds and awareness for 170 children’s hospitals in the U.S. and Canada, including the IWK Health Centre located right here in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Pirates of the Caribbean on the race route of Disney’s Princess Half Marathon 2014.
It’s rare when two of your passions collide so perfectly. I’ve been participating in runDisney races since 2010 when I completed my first marathon during the Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend. And I have to say, it wasn’t hard to get hooked as there is nothing quite like running a runDisney race. The costumes, entertainment and the overall experience of running through Disney theme parks and resort areas make runDisney races a bucket list item for any aspiring or seasoned runner.
So naturally, when I learned I could participate in a runDisney race in support the IWK I came running (pun intended). Children’s Miracle Network participants can support their local children’s hospitals by signing up for the Princess Half Marathon or the Glass Slipper Challenge (a 19.3 mile adventure over 2 days). Glass Slipper challenge participants will run the Disney Princess Enchanted 10K on Saturday, followed by the Disney Princess Half Marathon on Sunday. Currently all races are sold out to the public but you can still participate by signing-up through Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals® or another participating charity or travel provider.
So are you in? Here’s the run-down (again, pun intended – I just can’t help myself!):
Fundraise the required minimum amount for your race to support children and families at the IWK Health Centre
Make your family’s travel arrangements
Pack your bags for the happiest place on earth
Just keep running…
The upcoming Glass Slipper Challenge will mark my 5th and 6th runDisney races, and they certainly won’t be my last. But for right now, my focus is on fundraising and supporting this wonderful cause that is very important to me. As an extra incentive to my supporters, if I reach my minimum fundraising goal by August 18, 2014 I have promised to come to work dressed up like Mickey Mouse and stay in character for an entire business day. That’s right, I will do absolutely anything for this cause and the children and families at the IWK Health Centre.
Have a magical race and thank you for your support!
We left the IWK feeling incredibly empty. Lost. Broken-hearted. But at the same time, we felt gratitude. Love. Thankful. Our loss will never be forgotten, just as the support and care we received during a most difficult time will never be forgotten.
Spirit of Giving 