On November 6th, we will be gathering with friends and family at Raymond James Stadium to raise funds for reasearch on heart disease and stroke. Of course, our personal cause is to raise awareness for congenital heart defects. 1 out of 100 babies are born with a heart defect.....that means 10% of babies are born with a heart defect. Doesn't that seem like a lot? Mateo was born with the most severe of all heart defects. He has 1/2 a working heart. I've heard that out of all heart defects, only 4% are HLHS. What odds. But it seems that the longer I am involved with our HLHS support group, more and more and more moms and dads are added to the group daily. Why are so many babies being affected with this?
This will be our 3rd heartwalk. It seems that every year we participate our team gets bigger. I'm very thankful for that because it means more people are being made aware of what Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome is. More people are aware that this is real and it severely affects lives. And more people are aware that there is no cure for this and nothing we know of that can prevent it...because no one even knows what causes it!
So, we'll walk again this year, raising money and awareness. If you want to help us spread the word on awareness, your job is easy. There's a lot of things you can do. You can visit
www.tampabayheartwalk.kintera.org/curechd and join our team. Come out and walk with us. We're meeting at Raymond James Stadium at 8am for the 3 mile walk. If you let me know your shirt size, I'll have a tshirt made for you. If walking isn't "your thing", than visit
www.tampabayheartwalk.kintera.org/masher and support us with a small donation. To spread more awareness, get educated yourself and let people know about congential heart defects. You can visit
http://www.mattersoftheheart-online.com and print out brochures to give to friends and family to let them know all about CHDs. Mateo was 1 in 100. Help us prevent that for someone else.
