This post is ded­i­cated to Causes that we feel very strongly about.

 

We feel it is so impor­tant to get involved and really sup­port char­i­ties for sev­eral rea­sons. As a soci­ety we should be edu­cat­ing our­selves, donat­ing money for research on find­ing cures, rais­ing aware­ness, and vol­un­teer­ing. It not only helps oth­ers, but brings every­one closer together as a com­mu­nity. In a nut­shell the more you give, the more you get back. We are per­son­ally donat­ing 10% of all pro­ceeds from our mul­ti­ple streams of income to these three char­i­ties or causes. We hope you fol­low this exam­ple and give to the causes that have touched your lives or that you feel pas­sion­ate about. You’ll be happy you did!

Now, we’re going to dis­cuss what Causes have per­son­ally impacted us and what you can do to help!

SIDS

SIDS is such a hard cause to talk about because it deals with lit­tle babies who are so inno­cent and help­less. SIDS, stands for Sud­den Infant Death Syn­drome. We felt the dev­as­ta­tion of los­ing a very dear loved one to SIDS recently. Our grand daugh­ter, Shyanne Eliz­a­beth White, passed away July 24th, 2009. She was just a week shy of being 3 months old and was one beau­ti­ful, happy lit­tle angel.

She was per­fectly healthy. No signs or symp­toms of any­thing being wrong. She just passed in her sleep with no warn­ing. She may be gone, but she will for­ever be in our hearts and minds.

The Bro­ken Chain

We knew lit­tle that morn­ing that God was going to call your name. In life we loved you dearly, in death we do the same. It broke our hearts to lose you, you did not go alone; for part of us went with you, the day God called you home. You left us peace­ful mem­o­ries, your love is still our guide; and though we can­not see you, you are always at our side. Our fam­ily chain is bro­ken, and noth­ing seems the same, but as God calls us one by one, the chain will link again.

What is SIDS?

SIDS is the sud­den death of an infant under one year of age which remains unex­plained after a thor­ough case investigation,in other words, they don’t know what causes it,  includ­ing per­for­mance of a com­plete autopsy, exam­i­na­tion of the death scene, and review of the clin­i­cal his­tory. (Will­inger et al, 1991).

In a typ­i­cal sit­u­a­tion par­ents check on their sup­pos­edly sleep­ing infant to find him or her dead. This is the worst tragedy par­ents can face, a tragedy which leaves them with a sad­ness and a feel­ing of vul­ner­a­bil­ity that lasts through­out their lives. Since med­i­cine can not tell them why their baby died, they blame them­selves and often other inno­cent peo­ple. Their lives and those around them are changed forever.

To learn more about SIDS and how you can help go to: www.sids.org

BREAST CANCER

This is one of those causes that  hits close to home to so many out there. We believe every fam­ily has been touched by this hor­ri­ble dis­ease in one way or another. Both Brian and myself have lost many loved ones to breast can­cer. Brian lost his mother when he was just 12 yrs. old. Very hard, as you can imag­ine to lose your mother at such a young age. Going into young adult­hood and not hav­ing your mother’s guid­ance is very tough. I lost two aunts and my mother was in remis­sion from breast can­cer, how­ever passed away on July 4th, 2011 from a gall blad­der surgery gone ter­ri­ble wrong.

It is a bat­tle that so many women and men have fought and con­tinue to fight against. Research has come a long way and it’s look­ing more hope­ful every day, but we must con­tinue to take action. Early detec­tion and screen­ing are absolutely nec­es­sary in order to stay on top of this dis­ease.  Pos­i­tive thoughts are key in order to beat it!

What is Breast Cancer?

Breast can­cer is a type of can­cer where cells in the breast divide and grow with­out nor­mal con­trol. About 85 per­cent of breast can­cers begin in the mam­mary ducts, while about 15 per­cent arise in the lobules. Tumors in the breast tend to grow slowly. By the time a lump is large enough to feel, it may have been grow­ing for as long as 10 years. How­ever, some tumors can be aggres­sive, and thus causes it to grow much more rapidly.

It is impor­tant to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between inva­sive can­cer and duc­tal car­ci­noma in situ (kar-sin-O-ma in SY-too). These are dis­cussed below and you can find more in the Diag­no­sis and Treat­ment sections.

Inva­sive Breast Cancer

Inva­sive breast can­cer occurs when abnor­mal cells from inside the lob­ules or ducts break out into nearby breast tis­sue. This allows the can­cer cells to spread to the lymph nodes and, in advanced stages, to organs like the liver, lungs and bones in a process called metas­ta­sis.

Breast can­cer may grow from a tiny tumor to a larger one, later trav­el­ing to nearby lymph nodes, then dis­tant ones. Finally, it may spread in other parts of the body. Can­cer cells can also travel from the breast through the blood and lym­phatic sys­tem early in the process when the tumor is small.

Duc­tal Car­ci­noma in Situ (DCIS, non-invasive breast cancer) 

When abnor­mal cells grow inside the milk ducts, but have not spread to nearby tis­sue or beyond, the con­di­tion is called duc­tal car­ci­noma in situ (DCIS). The term “in situ” means “in place”. With DCIS, the abnor­mal cells are still “in place” inside the ducts. DCIS is a non-invasive breast can­cer (you may also hear the term “pre-invasive breast car­ci­noma”). Although the abnor­mal cells have not spread to tis­sues out­side the ducts, they can develop into inva­sive cancer.

While they do not yet know exactly what causes breast can­cer, they do believe that cer­tain risk fac­tors are linked to the dis­ease. A risk fac­tor is some­thing that affects your chance of get­ting a dis­ease such as can­cer. Dif­fer­ent can­cers have dif­fer­ent risk fac­tors. Some risk fac­tors, such as smok­ing, drink­ing, and diet are linked to things a per­son does. Oth­ers, like a person’s age, race, or fam­ily his­tory, can’t be changed.

To find out more about Breast Can­cer and how you can help go to: www.komen.org

DOWN SYNDROME

This is one of our causes that is near and dear to my heart.  My brother, Brett David Wal­lace, was such an angel. He was non ver­bal and was diag­nosed as  severely men­tally retarded at birth. He was born in 1965 and  the doc­tors told my mother and father that he wouldn’t live past the age of 2, then 7 . He did though, and then they said he wouldn’t live to past the age of 13, but yet again, they were wrong. He actu­ally lived to be 39 years old. You see, the med­ical com­mu­nity or (maybe it was just the mil­i­tary hos­pi­tal where my father was sta­tioned), weren’t very knowl­edge­able on the sub­ject of Down Syn­drome back in those days. Thank­fully, we’re learn­ing more and more these days and in turn, are able to help such  indi­vid­u­als live a higher qual­ity of life.

My brother, Brett and I had a very spe­cial rela­tion­ship and bond. He didn’t have to say any­thing. Yes, he made noises, but I knew most of the time what he needed. Maybe it was telepa­thy, maybe it was God talk­ing to me, I don’t know. I just know how spe­cial and lov­ing he was. He’s def­i­nitely in my heart for­ever and always.

It is a chal­lenge to take care of such indi­vid­u­als, but it’s one of the most reward­ing and spir­i­tual jour­neys taken in life. Once they touch your heart, you’ll never for­get it! They don’t judge you, they don’t react like all of us, they are just sim­ply REAL!

My Brother, God’s Gift

A brother as spe­cial as Brett, no words can ever reflect. Our spe­cial bond was spir­i­tual. A love divine, not of mankind.

A look, a gaze, a pat on the head. A sense of nor­malcy, to me noth­ing needed to be said.

An unspo­ken under­stand­ing of a brother-sister bond. That God gave him to me as a gift from beyond.

An uncon­di­tional love sent from above, He touched my soul so deep and true, miles apart and still his smile shined through.

I always saw peace and love in his eyes. He is God’s child, an angel in disguise.

Most can’t under­stand a part of me is miss­ing now.But I know he is with me, smil­ing down. Liv­ing a life far exceed­ing expec­ta­tions, God’s gift to us and for that I am most gracious.

No more suf­fer­ing nor pain, sad­ness or strain, God promised us that. I put all my faith and trust in Him. Brett is in heaven now, that I can depend.

My brother-God’s gift.

What is Down Syndrome?

Down syn­drome is a genetic con­di­tion that causes delays in phys­i­cal and intel­lec­tual devel­op­ment. It occurs in approx­i­mately one in every 800 live births. Indi­vid­u­als with Down syn­drome have 47 chro­mo­somes instead of the usual 46. It is the most fre­quently occur­ring chro­mo­so­mal dis­or­der. Down syn­drome is not related to race, nation­al­ity, reli­gion or socioe­co­nomic sta­tus. The most impor­tant fact to know about indi­vid­u­als with Down syn­drome is that they are more like oth­ers than they are different.

Diag­no­sis

Down syn­drome is usu­ally iden­ti­fied at birth or shortly there­after. Ini­tially the diag­no­sis is based on phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics that are com­monly seen in babies with Down syn­drome. These include low mus­cle tone, a sin­gle crease across the palm of the hand, a slightly flat­tened facial pro­file and an upward slant to the eyes. The diag­no­sis must be con­firmed by a chro­mo­some study (kary­otype). A kary­otype pro­vides a visual dis­play of the chro­mo­somes grouped by their size, num­ber and shape. Chro­mo­somes may be stud­ied by exam­in­ing blood or tis­sue cells.

Causes

Down syn­drome is usu­ally caused by an error in cell divi­sion called nondis­junc­tion. It is not known why this occurs. How­ever, it is known that the error occurs at con­cep­tion and is not related to any­thing the mother did dur­ing preg­nancy. It has been known for some time that the inci­dence of Down syn­drome increases with advanc­ing mater­nal age. How­ever, 80% of chil­dren with Down syn­drome are born to women under 35 years of age.

Learn­ing & Development

It is impor­tant to remem­ber that while chil­dren and adults with Down syn­drome expe­ri­ence devel­op­men­tal delays, they also have many tal­ents and gifts and should be given the oppor­tu­nity and encour­age­ment to develop them.

Most chil­dren with Down syn­drome have mild to mod­er­ate impair­ments but it is impor­tant to note that they are more like other chil­dren than they are dif­fer­ent. Early Inter­ven­tion ser­vices should be pro­vided shortly after birth. These ser­vices should include phys­i­cal, speech and devel­op­men­tal ther­a­pies. Most chil­dren attend their neigh­bor­hood schools, some in reg­u­lar classes and oth­ers in spe­cial edu­ca­tion classes. Some chil­dren have more sig­nif­i­cant needs and require a more spe­cial­ized program.

Some high school grad­u­ates with Down syn­drome par­tic­i­pate in post-secondary edu­ca­tion. Many adults with Down syn­drome are capa­ble of work­ing in the com­mu­nity, but some require a more struc­tured environment.

For more infor­ma­tion about Down Syn­drome and how you can help go to: www.nads.org

Thank you for allow­ing us to share our sto­ries with you along with why these causes are so impor­tant to us. We hope this inspired you to take action and reach out to oth­ers. Please feel free to com­ment and share any sto­ries that may have impacted your life.