Rachel has now developed a Teen Blood Drive Program with Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital.        There’s even a 2-3 minute public service announcement/ short film about Lucia and the need for blood donations.  

Successful First Blood Drive at Memorial Sloan Kettering   

Thank you for participating and/or supporting the first school-wide blood drive at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Twenty members of the community gave either blood or platelets over the last two weeks – an impressive number of participants for the first drive. The effort was led by 8 seniors, 1 junior, 1 sophomore, 3 faculty and 7 parents. Next week there are an additional 7 donors, for a total of 27!

Special thanks go to Rachel Giacobbe ‘12 for her passion to make a difference and organizing this blood drive. She is planning another drive in the spring; we hope to double our number of donors in that effort. Throughout the drive, support was given by many, especially Mary Leber Hughes ’98, a nurse in the pediatric division of MSK and Joe Licata, the Director of the MSK blood bank.                            

It was an amazing effort by all!
For more information on donating blood or platelets, click on the following link: http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/11698.cfm

I’m writing to you to extend my deepest gratitude for your continued support and dedication to Lucia and our family’s cause. I know you all have been very proactive in ensuring the success of the LuciaGirl Pediatric Oncology Foundation.

Please know that without your support, everything from dealing with the grief to creating an organization whose goal is the unwavering support for families and children that encounter catastrophic struggles would be immeasurably more difficult, if not impossible.

As soon as Lucia arrived in our lives she was our angel and our family treasure and to share her life with you is an honor.

Knowing that Lucia, in her short but full life, has encountered so many talented and genuine people gives me hope that her time here was not in vain and that true good will come from this.

With my deepest appreciation,
Marcus Renard (aka Dadda)

Children don't ask to get cancer.
They don't do anything to give themselves cancer.

They are forced to live in this toxic world that we created and then they and their family live the worst nightmare.

Pediatric cancer is the number one cause of non-accidental death in children!

Lucia got every chemo available. She got the same stuff you, me, my grandmother would have gotten (that's how old the stuff is)!  There is constant talk about 10 year studies to prove that treatments work, well where are the studies that prove the treatments we use now don't work?  All those tiny little gravestones, that's where.

 We need your support today to STOP THE MADNESS!

Join us in making a difference politically and practically.

Every new supporter brings us one step closer to a cure or at least effective treatment that keep our children alive longer than a few months.

 12,000 children diagnosed with cancer every year. Behind every beautiful child is a story…a story of a child with cancer and the living nightmare that each child and his/her entire family must face twenty four hours a day seven days a week. This is a constant reminder that cancer keeps happening; cancer does not take a vacation. It can strike any child at ANY time.

U.S. Senators Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY)

 

Princess Lucia had a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme stage IV.  She needed immediate brain surgery followed by six weeks of intense radiation and chemotherapy.  The chemotherapy was to continue for at least a year! (You would think that if the treatment is planned for a year that she had at least a year to live).

No sooner does the first course of radiation and chemo end, another tumor appeared around her right eye.  It swelled up like she got hit with a baseball.  The glioblastoma had now morphed into an even more rare and aggressive tumor, an atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor (ATRT). 

Due to the location in the eye socket/sinus they could not operate this time.  Her only hope to "buy her some time" (stick a knife in my heart why don't you) was more radiation and chemotherapy.  She even had to have weekly lumbar punctures (spinal taps - big, long needles in her skinny, little spine to inject more poison, I mean chemo). 

Still smiling, our little angel. Went to the hospital the next day and never came home again.The doctors and nurses at Sloane Kettering Memorial Hospital went to work, using every trick in the book (problem is, the book needs to be rewritten) to eradicate Lucia’s tumor.  I will never forget the words, "I will treat her as if she were my own child".  Those words kept us going.  Lucia underwent 5 more weeks of radiation treatments, as well as high-dose chemotherapy. 

Her beautiful, curly, brown hair fell out, her lean, muscular body wasted to skin and bones, and she threw up so often that all she had to say was "bucket" and someone came running. 

At one point the treatment had to be halted because the side effects from the chemo were so severe that she became dangerously anemic, needed blood transfusions and she started to lose hearing — but as we were approaching the finish line we noticed that the bridge of her nose seemed wider and her right cheek was swollen.  Guess what? More tumors emerged in her brain.
This cancer was laughing at us! 

No matter what we did as soon as one tumor was killed off, more would pop up. When it was clear nothing more could be done to cure her, we stopped treatment.

She used a wheelchair because she could no longer walk. Soon, her sight failed and she spoke less and less.  Eventually, she struggled to breathe on her own but still the Princess Warrior hung on.  We vowed to take care of her and keep her comfortable, so we had a respirator placed.  We cuddled, watched SpongeBob and waited for direction from God and Lucia. 

Eventually neurological tests and a CAT scan confirmed that Loosh Kaboosh (this kid has many nicknames, okay) was ready to go to heaven and be God's angel.  We removed all tubes and machinery and kissed her pretty face one last time. 

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Lucia’s legacy speaks volumes about her loving and unselfish nature. Never did she complain, never did she whine.  She even asked if she could do some volunteer work at the ASPCA and read to the blind. At 8 years old, she showed more courage and good grace than most adults. Not once did she say, "Why me?"

Well, like I said, Lucia's a better person than I am, because I constantly ask, "Why her?" 

That's enough for now, I've run out of Kleenex.  Can you appreciate the pain I'm feeling writing this?  Trust me, if I didn't feel it was critical to do something about this, I would stay under my rock and wallow but I also know that Lucia's watching and I need to do the right thing.

 I may never get the answer to why Lucia but one thing is for sure, the next kid, and there will be a next kid, might be yours.    Please contribute what you can, be it money, time or skill.

Dear Friends of Lucia...