Dear Gossips,
It's a late start today because I spent the morning at Breakfast of Champions in support of Sick Kids Hospital. The event invites young professionals in the city to hang over breakfast with business and community leaders. They get facetime with people whose careers they want to model while raising money for one of the leading children's hospitals in the world.
And then we got to meet Olivia Santarelli, the highlight for everyone. Olivia is in 9th grade. Four years ago she was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma. She spent 10 months straight at Sick Kids when she was first admitted. She’s received countless treatments, chemo, radiation; she’s had several surgeries; part of her lung has been cut out, her diaphragm too. But I don’t exactly remember, exactly, any of these details. The reason I don’t remember is that she spent more time talking about how much FUN she had at Sick Kids. How she demanded that her chemo schedule be adjusted so that she wouldn’t have to miss arts and crafts and play time in the afternoon. So here’s a kid who’s fighting for her life, who wears a chain of beads around her neck (when she was there), each bead representing every treatment she’s ever had, and she can still say that during the process she experienced childhood.
This is why Olivia is the Patient Ambassador for Sick Kids Hospital. That should tell you the kind of work they do there. Click here to learn more about Olivia and other children like her who are being helped by Sick Kids Hospital.
Have a great weekend!
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
