One of the things that our family loves to do is promote the work of Chase’s hospital, Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. The treatment that Chase had there saved his life, and the doctors, nurses and staff of the hospital are the top in the world.
Because of this, we try to help the hospital in any way that we can. This year, that includes dusting off my running shoes, training for several weeks using the aptly-named “Couch to 5K” app, and running in the Run for Gus, an annual fun run along the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago.
The run was started by the family of Gus Evangelides, who lost his battle with brain cancer in 1995, just three months shy of his second birthday. Today, his family, and dozens of other families from Lurie, run to help raise money to fund brain cancer research at the hospital. Over the years that the Run for Gus has been going on, it’s raised millions of dollars to fund brain cancer research at Lurie.
This run has been a tremendous opportunity for our family to give back a little to Lurie Children’s. Brain cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer deaths among children, and fatal for almost half of the kids diagnosed, but there is painfully little research being funded to help stop it.
With some exciting new developments in cancer research on the horizon (see here and here), Lurie researchers could be just a short time away from making significant discoveries toward finding life-saving treatments for kids like Chase.
I hope that some of you might be able to join us in the run on July 24 (even to cheer us on), or help me raise money for the hospital by donating toward my run. You can do either by visiting my personal page at the Run for Gus website: http://foundation.luriechildrens.org/goto/ewoldt2014
I hope you’ll join me in supporting this worthy organization!
