You don’t need to battle a chronic illness on your own. If your child is battling a chronic disease, there is a whole community out there consisting of other families in the same situation and even more people who are willing to help.
This blog looks at the family of a girl receiving IVIg treatment and what they did to get the resources they needed. Hearing about their efforts may provide you with some ideas about how to form your own initiatives to support your son or daughter.
Team Ivy: with love
The child’s name is Ivy, and her parents, Tiffany and Dave, are doing everything they can to make her life easier and more comfortable. After spending so much time in the hospital with their daughter, who is often sick and receives IVIg treatments, they realized there were several of the hospital’s needs that they wanted to help fulfill, which in turn would make everyone lives’ easier.
The list of needs included new beds for parents to sleep on while their children were being treated, a refrigerator for the nurses, and the necessary tools for play therapy. In order to obtain these things, Tiffany and Dave created a page on everdayhero.com, a website where individuals can create personal fundraising pages to raise money for nonprofit causes, and post about their progress and their appreciation to donors.
They started Team Ivy: with love on March 20, 2010, with the first post stating their goal of raising $5,000 to help the hospital where Ivy received treatment. After just one day, the parents posted that they had already raised $1,000, and only two months later they had reached $4,000. Aside from individual sponsors, Nuffnang, a major online advertising site, joined Team Ivy and promised to match the next $500 raised by bloggers in order to reach the $5,000 goal.
You can make a difference
Ivy’s parents are just one example of a supportive family working to make a difference. The story of Tiffany and Dave shows that even the smallest steps can make a big difference in enhancing your child’s quality of life. Decide what it is in your child’s treatment that needs improvements and form your own fundraising page, create a blog and write about your experiences, or join together with other affected families and start an initiative.
Remember, you can do it. Help is out there, you just need to ask.
Sources:
Three Ring Circus: http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/three-ring-circus/020fa0915dff4189fe4da3f34ad822d0
Behavioradvisor.com: http://www.behavioradvisor.com/PlayTherapy.html
Everyday Hero: http://www.everydayhero.com.au/
Team Ivy: with love Everyday Hero page: http://www.everydayhero.com.au/hero_pages/view_posts/team_ivy
Nuffnang: http://www.nuffnang.com.my/
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