Honored Patients

"Samantha (Sam) Pratt is a typical high energy 4-year old that likes to play dress up, do arts & crafts, ride her bike & fights with her little brother Ryan with one exception... she has Pre-B Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL). In January 2009 Sam got a high fever that just wouldn't go away. After a few nights in the hospital in January, Sam spent over a month undergoing weekly checks of her blood & appointments with her Hematologist. When Sam's blood counts still had not rebounded and her fever returned, she was sent to the emergency room and scheduled for a bone marrow biopsy. On February 20, 2009, within an hour of her biopsy we received the shocking diagnosis that she has ALL. Sam was admitted to the Pediatric Oncology ward at Johns Hopkins that day & her chemotherapy started the next day.

Sam & our family have had a year filled with ups & downs but Sam has been strong, brave & smiling through all of it! Sam has now successfully made it though the heaviest part of her chemotherapy and is in the Maintenance Phase of her treatment. She will continue receiving chemotherapy until April 28, 2011. Her current treatment protocol includes daily oral chemo, monthly IV chemo and intrathecal chemo every 3 months. None of this is keeping Sam down! She is looking forward to a summer of swimming, tubing & sailing on the Bay & of course eating crabs!" - Jennifer Pratt (Mom)

Help Sam find a cure for leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families.

1^st Annual Honorary Skipper J80 Fun Race (Coming Soon!)

"It's not about winning races. . .it's about smiling faces."

Below are the names of those who are honored as survivors or remembered as loved ones lost far too soon.  Someone they know or knew donated and/or raised $1,000 or more as a way to give back so that future patients and families might one day embrace a world without cancer and celebrate the spectacular outcomes.  The names appear with the year that the funds were raised.  They will also appear on two different plaques, the Survivor Plaque and the Memorial Plaque, which will be displayed year round at the Eastport Yacht Club.*

A Future of Spectacular Outcomes ~ Stephen E. Ostrow

Cancer, in its many forms, is ubiquitous.  It intrudes on our lives, either directly or through family, friends and colleagues.  At those times cancer, always in the background, becomes the dominant theme in our lives.  So it was when our son Alan was diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML)  in 1978 and when, in 1984, at age 20, he died from the disease.  (Among cancers, leukemia has the dubious distintcion of killing the most the most poeple.)

His death has left a gaping hole in our family.  Both emotionally, and in very practical ways, he is missed as a son, as a brother, and most recently, as the uncle of our granddaughter who will never know him.  Above all, Alan lost a life to live thatalready was brimming with potential.  "What might have been" still reverberates.

After the initial illness and diagnosis, when he was strong enough, our fourteen year old Alan went down to the Brown University library and spent a day researching CML.  What he found held out no hope.  Today, it is different.  Today he would have found reference to the drug Gleevec, and the overwhelming probability that the progress of his CML would be dramatically slowed; that he would have more time to live that life and to realize that potential.

The chromosomal alteration that is related to CML (Philadelphia Chromosome) was discovered in 1960.  It took the following 41 years for scientists to find out why this alteration took place and what compounds might prevent it, to test that drug on humans, and finally, in 2001, to get FDA approval.  A significant portion of this research was funded by The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.  It follows that funds raised through this year's Leukemia Cup Regatta may not yield practical results for year to come.  Yet for the patients who benefit, perhaps decades hence, and those who love them, those results will be deemed spectacular.  So it would have been for us in 1984, when Alan died.

This is the history and the premise that engendered the Alan Ostrow Survivor & Memorial Program.  I am writing to you whose lives were changed from the moment that your diagnosis, or that of someone you love, was cancer.  Please join me in this endeavor.  The funds you choose to give and/or raise will assure a future of spectacular outcomes.

With heartfelt thanks,

Stephen E. Ostrow 

*(Please note that not all names have been received by the Maryland Chapter and may not yet appear either here on the web site or on the plaques.  The plaques will be displayed once all names have been provided and a date has been set for their display.)