Jake Larkin Shaves for a Cure!

Jake Larkin is once again shaving his head to raise awareness and money to help support the on going and much needed pediatric cancer research.


On February 17, 2012, at just five years old, Jake was diagnosed with Very Severe Aplastic Anemia (VSAA), a bone marrow failure disease. VSAA is extremely rare, life threatening, and its cause is unknown.

Jake fought a long, hard, two-year battle, including weekly blood transfusions, fists full of pills to swallow daily, in and out of the hospital, moving half way across the country for a year to be treated by a specialist, rounds of chemotherapy, and finally a bone marrow transplant. Thanks to Dr. David Margolis and his team at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, and the amazing generosity of Jake’s donor, “Jane”, who out of the nearly 25 million potential donors in the world-wide bone marrow registry, was Jake’s one and only exact bone marrow match, Jake beat those odds and survived.

Jake is here today because of Jane, Dr. Margolis, Children Hospital of Wisconsin, and the hundreds of people working together, around the clock and around world with the goal of getting him cured.

He is also here today thanks to pediatric cancer research. While Aplastic Anemia is not a cancer, Jake's treatment included many of the protocols and medications developed for pediatric leukemia treatment. So, the same research that helps find better treatments for childhood leukemia helped Jake survive.

 
A not so fun fact:

- 1 in 285 children will be diagnosed with cancer this year, but only 4% of federal government cancer research funding goes to study pediatric cancer.

The money that Jake raises will go directly to the MACC Fund www.maccfund.org, a foundation focused on supporting research done through the hospital where Jake was treated. In Jake’s own words before his first fundraiser, “Even though I'm a kid, I can raise money so that Dr. Margolis and the scientists can keep doing experiments to help kids get better.”

Jake is also shaving his head to honor his friend “Superman Sam”. Jake and Sam got sick about the same time and met at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. Sadly, Sam isn’t with us today because the treatment for his leukemia didn’t work. To honor Sam, Jake will shave and "go bald" like when they were both in the hospital together!

Please consider supporting Jake's effort by donating what you can to this cause and SPREAD THE WORD! Every post and share on social media have the potential of raising the awareness and much needed funds to allow medical science to stay up late “doing the experiments” and work needed to save the lives of sick children.

This years shave will take place at his school, Ojai Valley School, Ojai California, on Thursday March 12, 2020 at 8AM.