Diabetes Health Supports “No Child Should Die Alone”Compassion Can’t Wait
Photo courtesy of compassioncantwait.org Director Jon Macht, Director of Photography David E. West c 2018
There is nothing worse in life than when your child is having a health crisis, and you are a single working parent torn between making a living to maintain health insurance and caring for your sick child.
I have been in this position, feeling tormented concerned with the unbearable pain that my son had to endure after a football head concussion. This was compounded by his first migraine at the age of 10 when a child pushed him off a playground platform, and he landed on his head.
The football concussion evolved into a 24-hour migraine that never ceased and lasted for years. My son experienced a migraine headache from the time he woke up until the time he went to bed. The quality of his life started to diminish. Sleep was his only reprieve.
One day when he was 13, and we were sitting in my car, my son turned to me and said: “Mom, there is something wrong with my brain and I don’t know what it is.” Feeling alarmed and scared, I took him to every traditional and nontraditional healthcare provider looking for a resolution. The time and cost to find a solution did not offer my son relief. His chronic head pain started to change his happy disposition. Feeling helpless and witnessing his discomfort; unable to ease his pain, led me to cry myself to sleep.
I want you to imagine being a parent of a dying child. Nothing can be more unbearable than knowing you are going to lose your child forever. I remember when my mother was passing away with the help of hospice at my home; wondering, how people could actually function and take care of the simplest task when grief overpowers them. As a parent, I feel a tremendous amount of pain for all parents that lose their child. We as a compassionate community can make the smallest donation, that will forever change a parent’s darkest moment.
For single parents with dying children, there is an organization that can help you; Compassion Can’t Wait started by Valerie Sobel whose life became unbearable when her child Andre was diagnosed with an incurable disease. Her days in the hospital exposed her to a tragic condition- working parents that left their children to die in the hospital alone. As a parent with a dying child, she understood how important it is for children to have their parent by their side. Not having to choose between making a living to maintain the health insurance plan but to be by their child’s bedside, holding their hand as they close their eyes and slowly transition out of the physical world.
Compassion Can’t Wait helped thirteen thousand single parents over the past twenty years as their advocate. Supporting them with their expenses, allowing them and their child to spend their last days together. What can be more important than being at your child’s bedside? Who wouldn’t choose this if it wasn’t about economics?
I would like to ask you to help these families by donating $1 to Compassion Can’t Wait. You have no idea what a difference this can make. If you can give $5.00, know this will be the most impactful 5 dollars that you will ever spend. The beautiful thing about life that we often forget is that we are not alone. Sometimes we don’t know it until an organization like this comes to our rescue.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, September 18th, please donate $1 and watch the short dramatic film Compassion Can’t Wait “No Child Should Die Alone”.
Film Director Jon Macht has brought Valerie Sobel’s true-life story to our screens, allowing us to see the moment that inspired her to create Compassion Can’t Wait, helping thousands of single-parent families in despair, pay their necessary expenses to enable these parents to stay at their child’s bedside during a catastrophic illness.
If you can find it in your heart and have the means to do so, please donate $1 or more today to Compassion Can’t Wait “No Child Should Die Alone”.