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...

My life is wonderful. I have a loving husband, a growing child, and a variety of activities taking care of them, helping others, and stretching my mind and abilities. Most importantly, I love God and know He loves me. This was not always the case. When I was in my twenties, I had a hard time finding a good job (the economic recession of that day was in effect), no boyfriend, and I struggled to make ends meet and enjoy my life. After being thrown out of my parent’s house, I moved from place to place and job to job (neither by choice) for over a year. On top of that, I had been in a car accident and had recurring pain with which I dealt. At one point, I was so depressed with the way my life was going, that I considered taking my life. What brought me back from the brink of such an action was that I felt some connection to my nephew (who was a young boy at the time), and I knew that everyone in my family would be negatively affected by my act. The memory of his sweet face and the ...

Today is the day. Today we have the Relay for Life in my hometown. We have already made about $500 over our goal of $3500 so I’m very happy going into the Relay.  I am so excited about today. We’re going to be selling homemade coconut salt scrub that our Miss Pinterest Sam Roberts has made for us. She also had the idea of making hair ribbons and got us started on that.  We’re going to be braiding hair, doing nails, selling jewelry and raffling some items, too. While the moms are getting pampered, we have some games for the kids to do as well. As for food, we went pretty simple, just muffins, apples, bananas, green tea, water and coffee.  We’re having a spa theme to the booth this year and I’ve called it the Angels for a Cure Stress Reduction and Cancer Prevention Booth! I can’t wait to see what all the other teams are doing. I hope we make our goal for the Relay. Our team has really come together. I’m so thankful to them. When my mother was sick, the...