A special note for our readers

Dear friends and family,

By know you know all about Madeline's battle with cancer. This morning our baby girl, who is 8 months old today, began several days of radiation therapy and 28 weeks of chemotherapy to eradicate the cancer from her body. We are facing a long, hard journey, but we feel blessed to be in the expert care of some of the worlds best doctors. Most if not all of you have asked what we need or offered to help with whatever need. Beth and I are just overwhelmed and humbled by this outpouring and want to thank each of you. To say we greatly appreciate this is a significant understatement.

We don't know yet know exactly what we need (this is gradually beginning to come into focus), but we would be so grateful and eager to accept any help you want to offer. As Maddie's treatment schedule develops, we'll have a much clearer idea of what help we need on a day-to-day basis, and we'll communicate that to you as promptly as we can. We know that we'll need to keep a very clean house - it's hard enough to maintain a semi-clean house with two little ones - to help ward off infection as her body endures the effects of chemotherapy, and we know that we'll need to restrict her exposure to crowds in general through the fall, and to sick folks. There may be opportunities to help in those areas. We've already received a number of meals which are presently being stored in our freezer until we can get to them - there's plenty more room in the freezer if you wish to help in that area.

Since many of you have asked about donations, we set up two different ways to facilitate any contributions you wish to make securely over the internet thru PayPal trusted partners. In either instance, you do not need a PayPal account to donate electronically.  If you want to do this the old-fashioned way, please send me a quick note so I can send our mailing address.

GoFundMe

On the right hand side of this blog, you will now find a banner that links to our medical and related expenses fundraising site and shows progress to our currently estimated goal: http://www.gofundme.com/dearmaddie. This site is accessible to anyone who has unfettered access to the internet.

FundRazr on Facebook

If you use Facebook, you can also link to our FundRazr app to make donation. This is listed on my Facebook profile, and we haven't already been properly linked on that site, please be sure to send a friend request.

Once again, thank you so much for your love, help and support!  While we may not have been blessed with heaps of money or possessions, we have been clearly blessed with a wealth of incredible friends and their unflagging support.  That much has been revealed to us in these last few weeks, and we are very touched.