Welcome back, everybody.
So it's time to get your blood pumping
and help cure childhood cancer.
It's all part of a 5K run walk hosted
by Saint Jude Children's Hospital.
So we are joined live this morning with
Liz Devins, your brand ambassador from
Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital.
And then Jennifer Gistel,
thank you so much for joining us.
You're the director with all the
details of this 5K, right? Yeah.
Thank you so much for having us.
OK, so we want to get everyone
out there this weekend.
Let's talk about the event 1st and the
importance of seeing a huge crowd.
Yeah, so the event is this Saturday,
September 24th at 8:00 AM at
NTC Park and Liberty Station,
and we're rallying together.
It's childhood Cancer Awareness Month,
and so we're excited to get together
and really celebrate all the
great work that Saint Jude does.
How many people are you hoping to show up?
You know, right now we're looking at about
500, which is a it's a great number.
We just passed our fundraising goals,
so we definitely are ready to keep
raising money for childhood cancer.
Can there be more than 500? Yeah.
Ohh. Yeah. Many, many people
we keep on coming. Yeah.
We want more. Definitely.
Yeah. We have anyone
who's watching right now.
If you're free on Saturday,
it's a great important event.
Obviously. Childhood cancer. Yeah.
I can not imagine what families go through.
Liz, thank you for being here.
And you're here to share a story
about what you went through
with your daughter. Yeah.
If you could please get into
some of those details and let us
know what what your family went?
Yeah, I'd be happy to.
So Claire is our youngest of five children.
We live in Carlsbad, CA.
Far away from Saint Jude in Memphis,
so back in 2006 we had the awful
diagnosis of a very rare and
aggressive pediatric brain cancer.
It it solely strikes children,
so much different than any adult
cancer and it's called a TRT and.
We obviously, you're just thrust
into this world on the spot.
You know, she she had a brain tumor
the size of an adult fist in her tiny,
you know, almost 2 year old brain,
only two almost 2-3 weeks
before her 2nd birthday.
And while we have a wonderful
Children's Hospital here,
most children's hospitals did not understand
or or have the knowledge or research
backing to know a more hopeful treatment.
So we had a great team of neurosurgeons.
That we're able to remove it here.
But beyond that, we were just not
given any help for her survival.
So as I said, we live up in Carlsbad.
Back in 2006,
the Carlsbad Mall just had a
brand new carousel that opened.
We were taking a day or two to decide.
We didn't have a lot of time to
decide how to move forward with her
treatment and make those decisions.
But I thought, you know,
I'm taking this kid to the carousel.
I'd always promised her that
she would do that.
When it opened, yeah,
walked up to the carousel and what do I see?
But an advertisement for Saint
Jude Children's Research Hospital.
I don't believe in coincidences right there.
Yeah, and I just called my husband.
He was at work and I said,
I don't know what this means,
but call Saint Jude's, e-mail them,
contact them, find out who they are.
I didn't really know where they were.
What they did.
He emailed them.
He got a call 10 minutes later.
And he explained how hopeless we felt.
And they said the words that changed
the whole course of everything for us,
which was don't give up hope.
There's always hope.
We were on a plane five days
later to Saint Jude.
We, our family of seven,
spent six months there,
living there in their housing,
you know, being provided with the
most amazing treatment with meals,
with just.
Everything that we needed the the,
you know, we were able to focus on
Claire and her four siblings all be together.
Yes.
And to be together, exactly.
That was really important to Claire.
And at the end of our six months
we came home with her and she was
tumor free at that point in time
and I'll never forget because
you you think of a hospital of
course is not a fun happy place.
But the day before we left
to go home to Carlsbad.
I said, Claire, tomorrow we get to go home.
And she looked at me with a confused
look and said, but this is our home.
Ohh,
you know,
she knew. Yeah. Well,
thank you for sharing that story.
I know that means a lot to you and
your family to have St Judes and how
much they helped you through some of
the most difficult times real quick.
I know we're running out of time.
Where can people go to get information or
to help out if they can't come to the 5K?
Yeah. The website is Saint Jude
stjude.org back slash Walk San Diego.
Perfect. Liz and Jennifer,
thank you for being here with us.
Thank you. Great to see you.