A couple months back a news producer from CBS Philadelphia recached out and ask if we would be interested in being interviewed for a telethon to raise support for Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation. You may recall we have received their support on a couple occasions that I wrote about here, so I was eager to help.
Click HERE to see the story that they compiled for the telethon.
I meant to write about it the day it aired, but got caught-up ranting about insurance. Sometimes I feel like I should apologize for bemoaning medical debt on here, but I am actively trying to stop “should’ing” on myself. Plus, with all frankness, I am F.O.O.F. (Fresh out of… well, you get it.) about what I am allowed to talk about.
Today I found myself thinking, ‘Man, I should write a post, but all I have to detail is that convo from the other day.’ The convo where Josh spent THREE hours on a three-way call with insurance and Children’s hospital only to find out that no one knows anything, about nothing.
Then I got this text:
Sometimes when you are a cancer mom you laugh because you don’t have it in you to cry. Because someone, somewhere, promises you they will save your baby and you trust that they will and don’t worry for a second that the red tape may bankrupt you in the process, so when months later collections is after you, you laugh.
When the CBS producer sent me the final video segment, I watched it 4 times, one after another, and wept hot tears. It was beautiful and poetic, but also entirely too intense because 4 years were smushed into 4 minutes and that’s hard for the mind to make sense of. At the very end of the clip the anchors make a joke about Beau’s cube solving abilities and their own shortcomings. It’s lighthearted and sweet and my eyes burned with the tears that wouldn’t stop flowing.
Sometimes when you are a cancer mom you cry because you don’t have it in you to laugh.
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A couple days after the segment ran, the anchor, Jim, emailed me to let me know they were able to raise over $7 Million dollars during the telethon! Amazing.
I laid in bed that night, scrolling through the texts I’d received from the friends and family that I had sent the video on to. Everyone was crying, it seemed.
I am glad to help ALSF raise money to help families like ours with the crushing financial burden that comes with pediatric cancer.
And I hope that the *sweet* story told of Beau in this video never diminishes that cancer is always a puzzle, and so long as some kids don’t make it, there is no happily ever after.
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If you would like to donate to Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, please be encouraged to do so.
If you would like to always be reminded that donations or not, we must get to the bottom of pediatric cancer, please be encouraged to keep reading. 😏
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