225,573 Visits from family and friends!  

A Request for Help

YOU can help save Hailey
…and the thousands like her around the country

On June 6, 2007, our daughter Hailey Jaye Meltz, then 20 MONTHS old, was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor called a Pediatric Low Grade Astrocytoma or “PLGA” (also referred to as “JPA” or Juvenile Pilocytic Astrocytoma. We will use PLGA throughout this letter). Currently, there is no cure for this tumor and the treatments that do exist are outdated, toxic, and ultimately torturous to the thousands of kids affected.

Brain tumors are the #1 cause of cancer death in children, and the #2 overall cause of childhood death behind accidents. PLGA’s are the most common type of childhood brain tumor, yet sadly, funding and research for better treatments and an eventual cure lag dramatically behind other cancers. There is hope, but your generous donations are desperately needed to speed up progress toward PLGA SPECIFIC RESEARCH as the race against the clock has begun and time is something these forgotten children and their families cannot afford.

We, the parents of Hailey and her older sister Faith, are writing this to assist fundraising efforts to change the outlook for our family and the thousands like us around the country. We plead for your financial support in the search for kinder, gentler treatments for these kids and a 100% cure. According to experts, with new scientific advances the acceleration of research to find more effective therapies for PLGA is quite realistic, but... read more -->

Our Journal   Sign-up to be notified of updates

Hailey Picture

Monday, April 28, 2008 - 9:41am

Wow!  What a couple weeks we’ve had!   Two weekends ago we were down in Whitewater for the “Win Big. Give Big” Event my cousin Carolyn and her AMA group put on to raise money for the PLGA Foundation.  It was a great time and they raised about $15,000 to go directly to the foundation and 100% of it will be used for PLGA specific research.  A couple weeks prior to that Carolyn presented at the national AMA conference in New Orleans and 2 other major colleges in other parts of the country have agreed to take up our cause and fundraise for the PLGA Foundation in 2009 as the Whitewater chapter did this year.   

Then last Tuesday Hailey started up another 10 week chemo cycle.  Everything went as well as can be expected, although she continues to strongly dislike the thought of the day and most of the time leading up to our arrival and through departure for home…so just about all of it actually.  Her ability to express her dislike for the process has become one of the harder things about those days for us.  We’ve said this before, but the verbalization of what is actually going on in her head is painful to hear at times.   Faith came along with us last week again.  Since she got to play in the playroom, color, play a game, run around, and watch a movie, she enjoyed the day and was a very good girl as usual. 

And then on Saturday we had the Team Hailey 5k Run/Walk For a Cure in Menasha.  The weather left a bit to be desired, but the day itself was a huge success.  In some ways we think it is appropriate that the weather was a little rough…it was symbolic of our journey and kind of inspiring to see people battle through the conditions with a smile on their face and a great attitude.   

Early totals put the net proceeds at around $43,000!  Incredible!  100% of those proceeds will go towards PLGA specific research.  It was almost overwhelming for Shannon and I to see so many family and friends show up to support Team Hailey and the PLGA Foundation that day.  To all of you who were there and we did not get to talk to nearly enough (which was just about everyone unfortunately), we apologize but sincerely thank you for your support.  It was our biggest fundraising event to date by a mile, and the results of the last two events have brought us over $100,000 raised for the PLGA Foundation in nine short months of fundraising.  We’ve learned a lot the first time through the Run/Walk process and plan on doing it again next year.  

Results from the race will be placed on the Team Hailey website in the Event Summary area in the next couple days.  Thank you again to Grandma Peg and the team of people she put together to make this event happen. They did an incredible job! 

We are off to Madison again tomorrow morning for another chemo trip so a bit of Monday depression has kicked in thinking about the day ahead, but we’ll use the support we’ve seen over the past couple weeks to push us through another trip and look forward to hopefully getting back to “normal” again on Wednesday.  Thanks for all of your concern and support.  We are so fortunate to have all of you as we go through this process.  

Read more of our journal-->



Upcoming Events

See all the events

Sign Our Guest Book

We cherish messages from our visitors. Take a moment to write a note in our guestbook or read entries from others.

Leave a note in our guest book

Funded Research

Your generous donations have helped to fund many research projects.

Please Link to Our Site

Help us spread the word and raise more funds for PLGA research by linking to our site. By creating a link to us on your blog or Web site you will help join the communities that can help Raise Hope for All. Learn how to link to us