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Meet Claire!
She's a 9 year old WARRIOR recently diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia . Her story is below but I wanted to create this page for their family. We know and love Claire. She's our neighbor and friend. She's kind and adventurous. Thoughtful and caring. Their entire family is incredible. When I approached them about a GoFundMe page, they said: "I'd feel greedy." I think that sums up how amazing they are.
The fact is -- they aren't greedy. They are amazing. Truth be told, these treatments are not free for them as they may be for others. Ongoing treatment costs for this illness is at a steady increase. It has went up 29% in just a few years, in fact. It's not easy, it is a burden. However, we (collectively) have an opportunity to make the financial part of the burden, light.
THEY ARE FIGHTING TOGETHER FOR HER VERY LIFE -- LET'S TOGETHER JOIN THE FIGHT! PLEASE HELP. ANY DONATION WILL BE ENTERED IN A RANDOM DRAWING FOR A SALMON RIVER RAFTING TRIP FOR FOUR.
All donations are entered a drawing to win a trip for four on the 5-Day Salmon River Canyons ~ Family Magic Adventure.
CLAIRE'S STORY
This is from Claire's mom journal, which I feel paints the picture well:
"Everything was fine until Claire came down with an ear infection. I’m usually that mom that gives some ibuprofen and lets my children ride out those pesky ear infections. But this ear infection was BAD, crying in the middle of the night bad. So I contacted my neighbor who works at sacred heart and had her write Claire a prescription for antibiotics. The medicine didn’t seem to even touch the ear infection…so we tried a stronger antibiotic. We discovered that her eardrum had ruptured. During this week of the never ending ear infection, she also seemed to lose all color in her face…she was SO pale. I assumed it was a nasty virus, but her ear was slowly healing, So we headed to Oregon for our Thanksgiving holiday. I remember several family members commenting on Claire’s color and she seemed so tired, but again…I assumed she was slow to recover from a virus.
We returned home to Oregon and dove back into regular life. Kids back to school and regular craziness. Claire’s color still hadn’t returned. In fact I would put blush on her before school in the morning. She was tired, but not overly tired (she wasn’t taking naps after school or going to bed early?) I questioned her several times over the next few weeks about how she was feeling, was she extra tired, something seemed off. I remember asking her about P.E. at school, she said “all the other kids run laps around the gym, but I can’t run..I can only walk it.” And when asking her if she felt more tired than usual she said “I don’t remember how I used to feel?” I suspected she had Mono….
I waited about two weeks before I finally took her in on a Friday. I though it was odd that her color wasn’t returning. The doctor (not my regular doctor) checked her out and confirmed my suspicions, that she was probably slow to recover from an illness, he offered to run some labwork, but if it was a virus, their wasn’t much they could do about it anyway. So I declined the bloodwork. Over that weekend, Claire has a lymph node under her jaw that was getting more and more swollen. By Monday I was pretty concerned about it. I realize that swollen lymph nodes are normal in kids recovering from viruses, but this was SWOLLEN and it was hurting to open her mouth and eat. So Tuesday the 15th, I took her back to the doctor and saw a nurse practitioner. She ended up drawing some blood and running some tests. My doctor called about 7am the next morning and told us that Claire’s hemoglobin and white blood cell counts were low, and he wanted me to take her to the sacred heart children’s ER in Spokane. Of course I googled low white blood cells in kids and didn’t like what I saw. But i’ll be completely honest, i wasn’t, in the slightest bit, worried. It didn’t cross my mind that this would be more than a nasty virus.
My friend Sharee, who works at the ER at sacred heart, called ahead and told the doctor that we were on our way. So we were brought right back into a room, where they took vitals and drew blood. I had brought a bag of stuff to keep us busy and we waited. I still was not worried! I wasn’t worried until my friend came in and mentioned something about staying overnight and basically hinted that it could be serious. The doctor followed her pretty shortly and told me it could one of two things, Leukemia or some nasty virus I can’t remember the name of, but that she was leaning towards Leukemia. Looking back, I realize that they probably knew at this point, but were letting me “digest” this information slowly. Claire was brought upstairs and admitted. This is when reality started to set in, but I was in denial. I called Brent and had a hard time saying the “L” word out loud. (It took me about a week before I could say it out loud without tears welling up) We both had this hope that maybe the doctors were wrong?
I headed home for some reason, and Brent came to the hospital. When I returned to the hospital, brent and my brother in law Ryan were in a room with the doctor and his nruse. The very first thing Brent said was “we’re just talking about Claire’s chemotherapy treatment.” Right before this…I still had a sliver of hope that Claire had some virus. It all came crashing down. There was no breaking it to me gently. We went straight into talking shop, while my mind was reeling with the news.
The next week was a blur, back and forth trips to the hospital, taking turns spending the night with Claire, phone calls, fighting tears, answering texts, talking with nurses, trying to understand what the heck was going on!"
She's a 9 year old WARRIOR recently diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia . Her story is below but I wanted to create this page for their family. We know and love Claire. She's our neighbor and friend. She's kind and adventurous. Thoughtful and caring. Their entire family is incredible. When I approached them about a GoFundMe page, they said: "I'd feel greedy." I think that sums up how amazing they are.
The fact is -- they aren't greedy. They are amazing. Truth be told, these treatments are not free for them as they may be for others. Ongoing treatment costs for this illness is at a steady increase. It has went up 29% in just a few years, in fact. It's not easy, it is a burden. However, we (collectively) have an opportunity to make the financial part of the burden, light.
THEY ARE FIGHTING TOGETHER FOR HER VERY LIFE -- LET'S TOGETHER JOIN THE FIGHT! PLEASE HELP. ANY DONATION WILL BE ENTERED IN A RANDOM DRAWING FOR A SALMON RIVER RAFTING TRIP FOR FOUR.
All donations are entered a drawing to win a trip for four on the 5-Day Salmon River Canyons ~ Family Magic Adventure.
CLAIRE'S STORY
This is from Claire's mom journal, which I feel paints the picture well:
"Everything was fine until Claire came down with an ear infection. I’m usually that mom that gives some ibuprofen and lets my children ride out those pesky ear infections. But this ear infection was BAD, crying in the middle of the night bad. So I contacted my neighbor who works at sacred heart and had her write Claire a prescription for antibiotics. The medicine didn’t seem to even touch the ear infection…so we tried a stronger antibiotic. We discovered that her eardrum had ruptured. During this week of the never ending ear infection, she also seemed to lose all color in her face…she was SO pale. I assumed it was a nasty virus, but her ear was slowly healing, So we headed to Oregon for our Thanksgiving holiday. I remember several family members commenting on Claire’s color and she seemed so tired, but again…I assumed she was slow to recover from a virus.
We returned home to Oregon and dove back into regular life. Kids back to school and regular craziness. Claire’s color still hadn’t returned. In fact I would put blush on her before school in the morning. She was tired, but not overly tired (she wasn’t taking naps after school or going to bed early?) I questioned her several times over the next few weeks about how she was feeling, was she extra tired, something seemed off. I remember asking her about P.E. at school, she said “all the other kids run laps around the gym, but I can’t run..I can only walk it.” And when asking her if she felt more tired than usual she said “I don’t remember how I used to feel?” I suspected she had Mono….
I waited about two weeks before I finally took her in on a Friday. I though it was odd that her color wasn’t returning. The doctor (not my regular doctor) checked her out and confirmed my suspicions, that she was probably slow to recover from an illness, he offered to run some labwork, but if it was a virus, their wasn’t much they could do about it anyway. So I declined the bloodwork. Over that weekend, Claire has a lymph node under her jaw that was getting more and more swollen. By Monday I was pretty concerned about it. I realize that swollen lymph nodes are normal in kids recovering from viruses, but this was SWOLLEN and it was hurting to open her mouth and eat. So Tuesday the 15th, I took her back to the doctor and saw a nurse practitioner. She ended up drawing some blood and running some tests. My doctor called about 7am the next morning and told us that Claire’s hemoglobin and white blood cell counts were low, and he wanted me to take her to the sacred heart children’s ER in Spokane. Of course I googled low white blood cells in kids and didn’t like what I saw. But i’ll be completely honest, i wasn’t, in the slightest bit, worried. It didn’t cross my mind that this would be more than a nasty virus.
My friend Sharee, who works at the ER at sacred heart, called ahead and told the doctor that we were on our way. So we were brought right back into a room, where they took vitals and drew blood. I had brought a bag of stuff to keep us busy and we waited. I still was not worried! I wasn’t worried until my friend came in and mentioned something about staying overnight and basically hinted that it could be serious. The doctor followed her pretty shortly and told me it could one of two things, Leukemia or some nasty virus I can’t remember the name of, but that she was leaning towards Leukemia. Looking back, I realize that they probably knew at this point, but were letting me “digest” this information slowly. Claire was brought upstairs and admitted. This is when reality started to set in, but I was in denial. I called Brent and had a hard time saying the “L” word out loud. (It took me about a week before I could say it out loud without tears welling up) We both had this hope that maybe the doctors were wrong?
I headed home for some reason, and Brent came to the hospital. When I returned to the hospital, brent and my brother in law Ryan were in a room with the doctor and his nruse. The very first thing Brent said was “we’re just talking about Claire’s chemotherapy treatment.” Right before this…I still had a sliver of hope that Claire had some virus. It all came crashing down. There was no breaking it to me gently. We went straight into talking shop, while my mind was reeling with the news.
The next week was a blur, back and forth trips to the hospital, taking turns spending the night with Claire, phone calls, fighting tears, answering texts, talking with nurses, trying to understand what the heck was going on!"
Organizer and beneficiary
Bradley Moss
Organizer
Post Falls, ID
Deena Ditto
Beneficiary