Miles for Madeline

Anna Cloud is organizing this fundraiser on behalf of Heather Del-Colle.

Donation protected

Miles for Madeline is for an incredible little girl who was recently diagnosed with Leukemia. Madeline is fierce, strong, and is constantly looking for ways to "change the world"; and so Miles for Madeline was born. The money raised here will be split between paying for Madeline's medical bills and to give back to UNC Children's. Madeline is always concerned about the kids she is going through treatment with and is looking for ways to help. Her goal is to give back to all the people at UNC that have helped her along the way and to help bring a smile to the faces of the children surrounding her.

More on Madeline's diagnosis is a message from her Mom, Heather:

Our story is not unique - which is a scary, sad, and sobering reality.

Madeline was diagnosed with B-Cell ALL (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia) on October 25th, 2021. We spent a week in the hospital. She had a port implanted in her chest on October 27th. We celebrated Halloween with hospital staff instead of friends, like we had planned. We left the hospital on Monday, November 1st. It took us the full week to be able to put together the sentence “Our daughter has Cancer.” And if the past 20 months of constant Covid quarantines weren’t enough, we were immediately introduced to the Induction phase of Cancer treatment where Madeline’s vulnerability to infection would be frighteningly high and our family of 4 immediately went into lockdown mode.

It is unreal what a Cancer family learns in such a short amount of time. Our hearts break for how much Madeline knows about port access, heparin, anesthesia, chemo, etc. Hearing our 4 year old explain that his sisters blood cells are “sick” is simultaneously heartbreaking and makes us proud of him for working so hard to understand. (Important to note, this came after he was able to comprehend that his friends could not “catch” Madeline’s Leukemia.) Mark & I eagerly and anxiously devour test results as soon as we get an alert that they have posted. We take note of questions we need to ask about things we still don’t yet understand.

But here we are. And honestly, we are so VERY fortunate. Madeline has responded to treatment extremely well. We are on course to enter each phase of treatment “on schedule.” We have an extensive, loving, and abundantly nurturing support system. And this is where our story deviates from some others. Some families are not so fortunate. Their stories are very different – from diagnosis to treatment to support to prognosis. Cancer is an astronomical blow to any family. We immediately knew during our hospital stay that we wanted to find ways to give back to other families processing their own Cancer journey.

Welcome to Miles for Madeline. As we started saying during our hospital stay and continue to say EVERY. SINGLE. DAY… “One Step At A Time.”

Thank you for all of your support and loving our girl!