Grateful for Your Continued Support
First steps. First words. Graduating high school. Getting married. Becoming a parent. Our lives are marked by milestones – big and small. For cancer patients, there are new sets of milestones, ones that mark how far you’ve gone in your cancer journey. The date you are diagnosed. The end of chemotherapy or radiation. The date you went into remission.
For Analisa Mueller, this Thanksgiving marks a major milestone: her son Sage, is one year cancer free. Sage was only 3 months old when he was first diagnosed with leukemia. Today at 2.5 years of age, he has a lifetime of Thanksgivings, birthdays, holidays and vacations to look forward to and share with his family.
But Sage’s milestone almost didn’t happen. At 12 months, Sage had relapsed a third time after chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant failed. His family was out of options. “Hope was all we had left,” said Analisa.
Sage’s doctor enrolled him in a clinical trial at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles for a new immunotherapy treatment that empowered his body’s immune system to fight cancer. He was one of the first patients to receive this new therapy at CHLA, which was fueled by LLS-funded research. Research you made possible.
For Analisa, a leukemia survivor herself, Sage’s remission is a miracle. Analisa was only 4 years old when her father died of leukemia. “My family has experienced so much loss from this disease. But we’ve also witnessed the transformation in leukemia treatment over the past 3 decades. It is a miracle that Sage is alive today, but it’s a miracle that research has made possible.”
Milestones like these happen because of you. Your support of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) changes the future for people with blood cancer, for children like Sage and so many others.
Your renewed support today, during this holiday season, will help so many more patients and families celebrate their own major milestones.
Another milestone happened on August 30, 2017. It was the day that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) approved the immunotherapy that saved Sage’s life. It was the day a new revolution in cancer treatment took hold. It was the day that the path to cures became that much clearer.
To date, LLS has invested more than $200 million in immunotherapy thanks to donor support. And LLS-funded breakthroughs in this and other treatments originally developed for blood cancers are now offering new promise via clinical trials for other cancers and serious diseases. With your continued partnership, we will advance immunotherapy and other forms of precision medicine, to maximize their potential and extend their lifesaving benefits to as many patients as possible.
Your investment in LLS saves lives. It fuels the milestones that drive cancer cures.
Your renewed support today will also extend beyond research to touch patient’s lives directly and immediately. You will provide critical education and support to patients and families right here in our community. And, with LLS’s powerful policy advocacy efforts, you will help make sure that our friends and neighbors can access the care and treatment they need.
Sage’s milestones can become other patient’s milestones. Please partner with LLS to make more of these remarkable moments possible by making a generous gift today by clicking here.
With my greatest appreciation,
Shannon Sullivan
Executive Director
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, California Southland Chapter
