Alex was just a happy, normal kindergartner when he was diagnosed basically out of the blue in February of 2012 after off and on back pain. He was diagnosed with ALL -acute lymphoblastic leukemia t-cell high risk. He started chemo the next day after getting the diagnosis. He endured 8 months of weekly, intense chemo and 2 weeks of cranial radiation. After the 8 months, he was on oral chemo at home and had monthly IV chemo for the next 2.5 years.
We did everything at Children’s Hospital in Omaha which is 6 hours round trip for us. We absolutely love everyone at Children’s Hospital. We realized that God along with research was saving Alex.
We soon started fundraising for CureSearch. Our first walk team was in 2013 and we have participated every year since. With the walk teams and Giving Tuesday campaigns, we have raised just over $115,000 for CureSearch. In order to raise funds for our walk team, we held a sloppy joe event for 6 consecutive years at the varsity basketball games. Our friends and people in the community would help donate the cooked meat, buns, brownies, etc. We would feed around 300-350 each year. It was a wonderful event!
We get a lot of donations every year from friends and family that support the cause and it’s also a tax write off for them. Alex has had several friends over the years when he was younger that would have a birthday party and they would say in lieu of bringing a present bring a cash donation to donate to CureSearch. Our volleyball team has a Crush it for Cancer event every other year, and we have helped out with that and they were generous enough to donate part of the proceeds to CureSearch. We have also gotten memorial money from people that followed Alex’s story and had been deeply affected by cancer in their family too.
Our fundraising has definitely been a collaborative and group effort, and we are so thankful to everyone. We truly realize that fundraising = research = lives saved!