Helping Hearts, Blog of Anne Sanders

  I was watching a TV show set in the future that said the common cold had died out. What a wonderful world that would be to live in. The common cold is not a big deal for adults, just annoying, but imagine if you got it before your immune system had really kicked in. Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a common virus that infects people of all ages and is usually harmless to people with a healthy immune system, but it is not so harmless to babies still developing in the mother’s womb. According to Stop CMV, permanent health problems or disabilities that may occur due to congenital CMV infection (which means infection with CMV while still in the womb) include hearing loss, vision loss, mental disability, feeding issues/Failure to Thrive (FTT), sleeping issues, sensory issues, behavior issues, small head/small brain (Microcephaly), intercranial calcifications, lack of coordination, cerebral palsy, seizures, and even death. About 1 in 150 children is born with congenital CMV in...

    May is lots of things—the gateway to summer, the last full month of school, the month of flowers after April showers—but also it’s national foster care month. I know some foster care parents and have shared their stories before, but not all of us are able to be foster care parents. So, I want to share some things that we can get involved in to help foster kids without being a foster parent. The first one is Together We Rise. What I like about Together We Rise is that it started out of a real need. Danny Mendoza had a cousin who was living on his own. Danny couldn’t find a way to help because he was told he was too young. He decided to start his own charity that could help children in foster care while mobilizing young people to make a difference in the world. Through its fundraising and network of passionate volunteers, Together We Rise gives foster children a brighter future and a sense of normalcy and belonging. They provide bikes, sports camps and simple...

  Can you imagine getting the news when you’re just four that you have cancer? It might not mean much, until you start the medical tests, shots, surgeries, chemotherapy and so on. What if while you were going through this, you decided to do something about it, to help people find a cure. That’s what Alexandra “Alex” Scott did. Alex, at age four, held a lemonade stand to help find a cure for all childhood cancers, including her own. Since that time, more than 20,000 Alex’s Lemonade Stands have been held across the country! Alex is no longer with us, but her idea of helping to find a cure is still alive and is part of a nationwide movement. It was just last weekend that I was raising money for the American Cancer Society through Relay for Life. Our Relay raised over $100,000 and I am so excited to have been part of it. But the reason I relay is for my son who was healed of cancer when he was 6. So, Alex’s Lemonade Stand is dear to me, too. National Lemonade Days are ...

Tomorrow starts National Park Week, a week to get out and visit a national park, for free! Sunday is the day to celebrate Easter, and it's also a perfect time to simply get outdoors and take advantage of the more than 17,000 miles of trails in national parks and another 15,600 miles of national recreation trails. God's creation is made for us to enjoy! Did you know there are more miles of trails in the national trails system than miles of road in the interstate highway system? Search here for events going on this week at national parks. Next Saturday is also National Junior Ranger Day for young visitors to "explore, learn, protect" and be sworn in as junior rangers. We have visited a few national parks in our time and there are always programs going on for Junior Rangers. There’s even a site for Web Rangers. Tuesday, April 22, is Earth Day, so if you want to roll up your sleeves and pitch in with a project, look for a park where you can help out...

How do you get thousands of students to raise $37 million and volunteer over nine and a half million hours to change the world? Ask Craig and Marc Kielburger. They’ve done it and it’s called We Day . We Day is a one day stadium-sized event that brings charities and inspiring speakers together for thousands of kids who have already spent a year making a difference. Craig and Marc have shared the We Day stage with change-makers such as Al Gore, Mikhail Gorbachev, Magic Johnson, Rev. Jesse Jackson and Larry King. This 2013-14 We Day season, there are 100,000 youth attending We Day events and 5.4 million people watching via broadcast. The Canadian brothers started the We Day movement that has done all of this six years ago but Craig founded their nonprofit Free the Children when he was 12. Free the Children “ has worked in over 45 countries since its inception, and has built more than 650 schools and school rooms in developing regions.” Along the way, Craig and Mark also star...

Photo from FreeDigitalPhotos.net This summer our life changed again. Our son has had ADHD his whole life and has been in therapy and received treatment for it for about six years. Two years ago, we had him tested again because his therapist said she thought there might be something more going on. Two years and many tests later, we found out she was right. Now as I see the hints of this new diagnosis all around, I wonder why it took so long to figure it out.   Part of it was that the person who tested him at first got him at a very low time in his life and she saw that instead of truly seeing him. When she came back to us with her results and said he didn’t even have ADHD, we were shocked. It didn’t make any sense. His teachers had pointed out his problems with concentration, control, and so on since kindergarten. It seemed impossible that everyone who had ever been around him for long was wrong.   We had to get a second opinion. Our son’s current doctor told ...

OK, out there, who’s heard about Thon? You may be thinking of a well known telethon or marathon but this is a special kind of thon—a danceathon that started 41 years ago. Penn State's THON is the longest dance marathon in the country lasting 46 hours and engaging more than 15,000 students each year. It starts tonight at 6 p.m. and will go until 4 p.m. on Sunday. After 46 hours of staying on their feet, the students get a taste of the daily hardships that children fighting pediatric cancer endure. Other students and families come support the dancers throughout the weekend. Attendees always look forward to "The Final 4 Hours," which includes Family Hour, when every family battling pediatric cancer is recognized and families give speeches about their battles with cancer To date , THON has raised more than $101 million   to benefit the Four Diamonds Fund providing money to offset the cost of treatment that insurance does not cover as well as other expenses of...

There is one organization that I’ve never given to that I greatly admire and this may be the month to do it. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital takes the end of the year to commemorate Thanks and Giving with the help of partners like Domino’s Pizza, the Melting Pot, Dollar General, CVS, GameStop and more. In this their tenth year of the Thanks and Giving ® campaign, it may be my time to give. My son certainly won’t mind since Domino’s is his favorite pizza. Domino's is matching dollar-for-dollar all customer contributions up to a total of $250,000 and has committed to giving St. Jude’s $10 million by 2015. It’s well on its way, having raised more than $3.6 million last year. It’s got two St. Jude Meal Deal bundles that include a buck donation to St. Jude this year, one for $19.99 and another for $13.98. There’s a place for me to eat and help St. Jude’s, too. The Melting Pot fondue restaurants are currently offering a $20 off deal to diners who make a donation to St. J...

I have written before about what it was like when my son had a malignant skin cancer at the age of five. Thankfully, God saved him for another purpose in life, but September is a month to think about children of all ages because it’s the month for childhood cancer, infant mortality, newborn screening, and childhood obesity awareness. I remember when he was just born and a nurse came into our room and took his foot and pierced it. She squeezed out his blood and his cries made me twinge in horror. What could be so important that the nurse had to do that to him? I found out later that pinprick could have made the difference in his life if he had one of the diseases that they test for at newborn screening. These tests are for diseases you don’t notice when you see a newborn baby, but they can prevent healthy development and lifelong impairment according to KidsHealth . There are no federal standards for this but most states screen for about 30 diseases. A friend of mine just ha...

I often brainstorm topics to write about for this blog. I keep a list of over 250 ideas to which I am always adding. But sometimes I miss the obvious. Have you heard of Volunteers of America ? Neither had I, until today. It’s a Christian organization that’s been around since 1896. It provides help for homelessness, people with mental health problems, children, communities, veterans, those with disabilities or substance abuse problems and seniors. It also provides emergency services for people in crisis. As its name implies, it provides its ministry just in America. It provides services to more than two million people in over 400 communities in 46 states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. You can search for a local office near you at its website . I love its statement of Why We Do What We Do:   We are Volunteers of America. And we are the first to step forward, Taking on the most crushing problems. The dire. The hopeless. The untouchable. And we make a...

Sometimes we all need a reminder. I’m the Volunteer and Charity Guru, but the other day my husband reminded me of what charity is all about. He and I love Tropical Smoothie, which is a smoothie, salad and sandwich place with lots of veggies and fruits. The great thing about Tropical Smoothie is that everything tastes delicious so you feel good about eating your fruits and veggies. So when my husband came home with a bunch of coupons for free smoothies and sandwiches, I was excited. I took some for myself and left the rest for him. Then he told me a couple days later that he went to Tropical Smoothie and got a smoothie, but he didn’t have his coupons. I said, “Well, then what’s the point of having them?” So, he let me know. He told me that he paid $10 for the coupons because it goes to Camp Sunshine. Tropical Smoothie helps raise funds for Camp Sunshine so kids with serious illnesses and their families can take a break at a beautiful camp in Maine for free. Tr...

Next week is your chance to do something for kids in foster care. Even if you can’t take a child into your home, you can do something for them and the families that care for them. What can you do? You can pray and ask others to pray for the more than 400,000 children in our nation’s foster care system, as well as their families, their workers, and the Church’s response to the foster care crisis. You can find a map of prayer vigils already scheduled at the Cry of the Orphan’s website . They offer a prayer guide you can download as well. May is National Foster Care Month. We just celebrated Mother’s Day and Father’s Day is around the corner. Can you put yourself in the place of a foster child who has been waiting to be adopted for three years or more? That’s the average time that a child waits in foster care to be adopted but they can wait five years or more or never get adopted. Those years are usually spent in several different foster homes, not just one. Many are older kids,...

It’s national teacher appreciation week and although this is the last day today, I wanted to share the great idea that my son’s Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) had because it is both easy and creative. Maybe some of you can share it with your own PTAs or PTOs. His PTO designated a different gift idea for each day of the week and asked parents to do as little or as much as they wanted. Monday was chocolate day. My son has six teachers so we bought six jumbo Hershey bars, one for each of them. Tuesday was school supply day. I personally think Post–it Notes are very useful, so I bought a few packs in bright colors for each teacher. Wednesday was flower day. I asked my son if he wanted to get flowers for all his teachers or just the female ones. He has three male teachers and three female ones. He chose to get flowers just for the ladies. I bought a bunch of roses and wrapped a stem for each teacher in a wet paper towel covered in aluminum foil to keep the water from getting...