Allen Hart:  

Please, donate whatever dollar amount you can to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. It was founded by the late entertainer Danny Thomas and is located in Memphis, Tennessee. I've been involved with St. Jude since August of 2003 when my daughter, Lauren, became a patient. St. Jude is unlike any hospital I've ever seen. It only accepts patients with catastrophic illnesses BUT St. Jude offers hope when the other hospitals say it's hopeless. Before we went to St. Jude, my daughter was told she would live less than two more years. After she had a stem-cell bone marrow transplant ( using stem-cells that were harvested from her blood ), she was cancer-free for over nine (9) months. The transplant itself was over $93,000. Insurance would not cover the cost because it was "experimental" even though everything was standard except for the way the stem-cells were filtered. Anyway, the procedure was paid for by donations made to St. Jude. In January 2005, we got the news that my daughter's cancer had come back. When her St. Jude doctor gave her the option of being treated at home ( where her friends are ) or getting treatment at St. Jude, without hesitation, Lauren said that she wanted St. Jude because "it is literally the best cancer hospital in the world". Lauren will receive experimental chemotherapy to shrink the tumor ( We know that standard chemo isn't really a cure, don't we ? ). Then, she will undergo another bone-marrow transplant, with her six-year-old brother as the donor. In June 2005, an area of inflammation was noticed in Lauren's brain. The inflammation was a side-effect of the radiation therapy she received in April 2004, for tumors that were in her skull. Lauren went through 29 sessions of Hyperbaric Oxygen treatments...Expand for more