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Community Corner

St. Baldrick's -- Team Teddy

Every year, 160,000 children are diagnosed with cancer.  Of those children, one in five (or 32,000) will not survive.  My son Teddy was one of the “one in five.”  He had been a healthy, smart, active, involved 8 year old, and was just 2 months into 3rd grade at Osborn Hill School, when he was diagnosed with an incredibly rare, aggressive type of cancer called undifferentiated sarcoma.  Just five days before he was rushed to the hospital on November 6, 2009, Teddy had been playing with his travel soccer team; now he entered a terrifying world of biopsies, blood tests and chemotherapy.  He spent 3 weeks at Yale New Haven Hospital before he was able to come home for a week, and then he returned to Yale for more chemotherapy.  In the meantime, my husband Bill and I tried desperately to find a surgeon willing to take on the extremely risky challenge of operating on Teddy to remove the large, still-growing tumor that was attached to his heart and lungs.  Just after Christmas, we found a doctor at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital who agreed to operate.  After two life-threatening procedures, Teddy came home, and recovered enough to travel to Boston, where he endured seven weeks of special proton beam radiation therapy at Mass General Hospital.  Though we were guardedly optimistic about his chances of beating his cancer, we soon had our hopes dashed when, less than a month after finishing his radiation, his doctors at Yale discovered multiple new tumors in his chest.  Teddy then spent his last summer in the hospital, coming home for just 10 days before complications required rehospitalization on August 6.  Early on the morning of August 16, 2010, Teddy died in his sleep.  His entire, nightmarish struggle had lasted just over nine months.

When Teddy was in the middle of his treatment, he was the honoree at Osborn Hill’s St. Baldrick’s event – where children and adults shaved their heads to help raise over $50,000 for pediatric cancer research.  He had been so self-conscious about losing his hair from his chemo, but that night, surrounded by friends and family who now were bald like him, he was happy.  After Teddy died, more donations flooded into St. Baldrick’s in Teddy’s memory, and this past year, the Osborn Hill event was yet again a financial success, as well as a way for people who knew and loved Teddy to celebrate his life and his memory.

This year, Teddy was chosen as one of five “Ambassador Kids” for St. Baldrick’s (http://www.stbaldricks.org/media-and-photos/media-stories/view/headline/title/St.%20Baldrick%27s%20Foundation%20Announces%202012%20Ambassador%20Kids/id/1593).  Our hope is that, when people hear his story, they will realize how little is done to help learn about pediatric cancer, and how much more needs to be done to ensure that no child, and no family, will have to endure what Teddy and our family endured.  We are in the midst of organizing the 2012 Osborn Hill/Team Teddy St. Baldrick’s event, which will take place on Friday, March 23 at 6:00PM at Osborn Hill (760 Stillson Road).  Please consider signing up to shave, or if you’re not feeling that daring, please consider sponsoring one of our other “shavees”.  There will be tons to do on the 23rd – a bake sale, raffle baskets, Super Duper Weenie and more.  It’s a fun, celebratory night that raises money for an invaluable cause.

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