How to donate

Make tax-deductible checks payable to: Help Hope Live, with "In honor of Cash Burnaman" in the memo section

Mail to: Help Hope Live, 150 N. Radnor Chester Road, Suite F-120, Radnor, PA 19087

For credit card donations, please call 800-642-8399 or visit helphopelive.org (enter Cash Burnaman into the Find a Patient field.)
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Thursday, October 4, 2012

Stem cells

If you have questions about stem cell treatment at Nutech Mediworld in India, please feel free to contact me at stephaniekrolick@gmail.com. We took my son Cash to Nutech twice for treatment. Cash is seven years old and he has a chromosomal rearrangement and pervasive developmental delays.

I recommend you read the early entries in the blog which discuss the trips and the results.

mostwithtoast.wordpress.com

The new blog is at mostwithtoast.wordpress.com. Please contact me at stephaniekrolick@gmail.com for the password. Really - don't feel bad - give me a holler :-)

 

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Change

The Change for Cash blog started two years ago to share our plans for taking Cash to India for stem cell treatment and then continued in order to track the resulting progress. The first entries are all about why we decided to do this momentous thing and then the first few months tell how we accomplished it. The outpouring of support from our friends and community during that time forever changed my life. I will always remember and be grateful for the love and generosity that were shown to us - I think I saw some of the very best in human nature.

We chronicled Cash's first trip to India day by day. That first trip was strange and beautiful and filled with enormous anxiety as we waited to see if the stem cells would help him in any way. We saw progress during those two months, but it was two weeks after we got home that my five year old really started to walk on his own. Over the next nine months, I saw him progress faster than I ever had before, with more eye contact, more cognition, more communication. With that in mind, we decided to take him back to Nutech Mediworld and spent our second Christmas in a row in New Delhi, with the added pressure of letting CNN film our journey. In the seven months since then, I have written about how Cash continues to improve and about how while we cannot be sure that the improvement is due to stem cells, I personally believe that they have made a significant difference.

I have used the blog to share not only our experience with being stem cell pioneers, but also to write about the ups and downs of being a parent to a special needs kid. The IEP meetings, the illnesses, the thrill of even the smallest progress, the heartache of comparison, the joy of hanging around someone who is as close to the embodiment of pure love as exists in the world.

And on top of all the stem cell excitement, the two years of this blog have seen change in our lives beyond those changes involving Cash. There was a difficult divorce, the end of ten years at a great job, a move to South Carolina, eight intense months of school, the loss of Aunt Dianne in our daily lives after being with us since Cash's birth, and then most recently a new town, new home, new school, new job in Nashville.

Change for Cash and change for me isn't going to stop. That is the great, and scary, thing about life - you can't stay the same even if you want to. But I am stopping this particular blog and moving on to a new one. We are entering a new phase of our lives, it is time for a new blog. If you want to join us and see what changes are afoot, please go to mostwithtoast.wordpress.com. This new blog will be password protected, so please contact me if you want access. I mean it - I am truly happy to provide the password - just write to me at stephaniekrolick@gmail.com.

See you on the other side!

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Appointments

Yesterday we took Cash to the eye doctor. He is getting new glasses with a stronger prescription. He is pretty farsighted and the doctor said that is unlikely to change much. Cash has had glasses on and off since he was about 6 months old, so this isn't too surprising.

And today I had a two hour parent-teacher conference with Ms. Finney. She is very nice and super competent. But I still don't enjoy those meetings. Maybe it is just too much of a reminder of how different Cash is. Or maybe it is that I sort of never really liked grade school - despite my straight A's - and it turns out I still don't like the rules and authority even as an adult. Cash apparently shares my feelings. It sounds like he is mostly well-behaved, but occasionally he sneaks off to be naughty and subversive :)