“Just being able to have the Orange Envelope to help with one of our months of rent, every little bit helps. We are not the type of people to ask for help, but we have to realize that we can’t do it all by ourselves. This experience taught us that there are people out there to help us, it’s been wonderful.” - Myles' mom Faith

“Pinky Swear understands that in times like this, families have so many other things to worry about. We didn’t want to think about things like car payments and the gift allowed us to focus more on Ella. It was very extremely nice to receive these gifts!” -Ella's Mom Kim

“I always say that hearing the diagnosis was the weirdest feeling. They were talking and when I heard leukemia, all I wanted to do was take my kid and run away,” Colleen explained.

“I was shocked. I never thought it would have been me that could get something like cancer,” said John. “It was hard and annoying, but it gave me a new sense of purpose."

“Life was pretty disrupted,” said Shondra. “I would just take off days for her treatment, but I got to keep my job. I tried hard to be an invaluable employee, so I worked longer days to compensate for days I had out.”

“We were taking a lot of extra precautions and trying to keep the girls’ spirits up. We could only see family standing in the yard and talking. We were grateful for Facetime and for the support of our community. We had become part of a cancer community that we didn’t want to belong to.”

“It’s hard when you have other kids, Ophelia and her treatment became the center of our lives. It was also tough helping the boys to understand, cancer is a scary big word. All the kids needed a lot of support.”

At 14 months old, little Isaac had his long open-heart surgery at Children’s Minnesota. A few days later, his team noticed that his platelets were low, one of the first indicators of cancer. Isaac also had red dots appear on his body; a sign that his blood wasn’t clotting. Isaac had a bone marrow biopsy, and a couple of weeks later Amanda and Derek received the news that Isaac had MDS: pre-cancer.

“Pinky Swear sent us an Orange Envelope, it felt good that there are Foundations out there willing to help families and to get support from people who don’t even know us. We felt very happy and thankful to get the support to get our mortgage paid and not worry about that for at least that month. We appreciate the hard work Pinky swear puts to help families and letting them know they are not alone! Thank you so much for all the love and support, it brings happiness to the families when we need it the most.”