Nash Day - "Giving back to the CF community"

So if read my blog back when Nash was first diagnosed you may have read the post I did about the backpack we received from another Calgary CF family. Nash was diagnosed when he was fifteen days old and shortly after, we received a backpack while attending clinic that was put together by this generous family. This family has a daughter who was also diagnosed through newborn screening and as a way of giving back to the Cystic Fibrosis community they made 10 backpacks filled with things that they found useful in the first year of her life. The thought and care that was put into these backpacks quickly overwhelmed us.

When we started to think about Nash's first birthday approaching we thought that we should see about carrying on with the backpacks as the clinic has just handed out the last one. We decided to also put together 10 packs: 3 girls, 3 boys and 4 neutral and took November 15th, one year from his diagnosis, off work as "Nash Day" to deliver these backpacks to Children's Hospital. 

We started the process of making a list of all the things that we wanted to include in our backpacks. I wrote a letter explaining what we are doing and started sending it to companies in the hopes of receiving some donations. I made sure to include a picture of Nash, usually with the item we were requesting, in order for their to be a more personal connections. The response I had was overwhelming and for two months, every day was like Christmas coming home to a parcel on my front porch. 

In the end I couldn't have been happier with our backpacks. Here are the backpacks and the items that we were able to put together with the donations from companies and our very generous friends and co-workers. 

When it came time to deliver the backpacks I was a bit sad for the project to be over. When I woke up that day I was a bit emotional thinking about that day one year ago. I held it together for most of the day until I got to the hospital and our CF nurses and social worker all came out into the waiting area of clinic to see us. Seeing them walk toward us, all the memories of that day came flooding back. I remember every single detail of that day like it was yesterday. When we gave clinic the backpacks we were told that on average 9 children in Calgary are diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis each year. Our clinic sees approximately 140-150 families of children with CF from Calgary and the surrounding area.  To our knowledge, 3 of our backpacks are already designated to families who have received the diagnosis since October. We hope that our small contribution to families receiving the diagnosis will make them feel like they are not alone.

Some of you may have heard about the Aviva Community Fund Project. Well, there is a mom in Ottawa who has started something similar to our backpacks in her area. Her project is called "Kaiden's Care Kits". With the support of her local Kinsmen/Kinettes group she has been putting these kits together in the Ottawa area but is now hoping to expand it to across Canada. Her goal is for each family across Canada receiving the diagnosis to receive one of these kits The contest is in it's final stages (only a couple of days left) and you can help make this a reality by voting for Kaiden's Kits by following this link: http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/2011/acf11376

If Kaiden's Kits do become a reality in Canada we are still hoping to do something in order to make that personal connection with families in Calgary receiving the diagnosis. We will continue to celebrate "Nash Day" each year on November 15th and hope that we can make a difference in some small way.