Rachael was only 14 years old when she passed away. Rachael loved Elvis; she had many Christmas ornaments, blankets, pillow, everything she could find with Elvis on it, and every CD. She also loved Audrey Hepburn; Breakfast at Tiffany’s was one of her favorites. Rachael was a self taught artist; she wanted to be a fashion designer and was already looking at schools. So when she got to do a Make-A-
Wish trip she picked Paris where she got seats at the end of the cat walk for a fashion show at Lafayette. Rachael had a big heart she loved everyone. She also had a great sense of humor, she lost her hair from the chemo and radiation when she was 13 and most girls would be devastated but she would pick on those of us that had to take the time to do our hair or had to buy shampoo. The last few years of Rachael’s life were hard; she had a craniotomy (brain surgery), laminectomy (surgery to remove tumors from spinal cord), full head and spine radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. She also had daily migraines. But still she didn’t want kids to go through what she was going through, so she started making earrings and Christmas ornaments to sell and gave the money to her doctors for their research. She never said this was for her but for other children. After Rachael passed away, I packed away the earrings and ornaments because it was just too painful for me to deal with. But then I had friends that convinced me that we needed to continue this for Rachael, this was what she wanted and if she was still here she would be doing it. At that point we started the nonprofit paperwork; it became obvious this was what we were supposed to be doing. When we contacted Rachael’s doctors they were setting up the Brain Tumor Institute at the same time and partnered with us, our nonprofit paperwork was quickly approved, the foundation has been growing steadily ever since, and we will continue to raise the awareness of pediatric brain tumors and fund research into treatments and hopefully one day a cure for this devastating disease.
