Sick S-burg student has school spirit
Posted by rob on February 23, 2006 under Uncategorized | 
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STROUDSBURG — Salli Chacon knew something was wrong with her daughter, Danica.
The girl had been sleeping more than usual. Her mother thought that Danica’s fatigue was due to her earlier wake-up time now that she was attending Stroudsburg Middle School.
By December, Chacon grew worried enough that she got some blood work done for her daughter. The white blood cell count was abnormally high. She had leukemia.
Chacon wrestled with how to break the news to her daughter. The 13-year-old cut to the chase.
“Mommy, I have cancer,” she said, according to her mother. “Am I going to die?”
Since then, the Chacons’ lives have been occupied with the battle against the disease: taking medication and searching for a bone marrow donor.
But they also tried to maintain life as usual. “She hasn’t missed a day of school,” said Chacon. “We’re trying to keep everything normal for her.”
Considering the situation, the family has been fortunate; Danica has responded to her medicine, Gleevec, and her brother, Jayson, 15, is a perfect match for a transplant. She is one of about 2,200 young people in America who are afflicted with leukemia each year; it accounts for about 25 percent of all childhood cancers, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Her classmates and teachers at the middle school have pitched in, too. The student government launched a lollipop sale fundraiser that brought in over $4,400.
The family will likely use the money to defray income it will lose this summer, when Chacon will stop working to stay by her daughter’s bedside after her bone marrow transplant at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The surgery hasn’t been scheduled yet, but the recovery period can take up to three months.
“I really don’t know what to expect,” said Chacon.
The class that raised the most money in each grade received a few prizes. On Tuesday, the winning sixth-grade class had an ice cream party. On Wednesday morning, it got an extra bonus: being taught by the school’s principal, Ray Scarpantonio.
“This is one of the things that you miss the most,” Scarpantonio said to Andrea Link’s social studies class. He led the 24 sixth-graders in a lesson that combined math and American history.
They plotted points on pieces of graph paper while Scarpantonio taught them ordinal and cardinal directions on an overhead projector.
After connecting the dots that they plotted, the students saw that it formed a portrait of George Washington. The rest of the class was spent on a lesson about the first president.
“It was funner than the usual class,” said Ciara Banks, 11, as she gathered her books.
The school’s efforts for Danica Chacon will continue. On April 8, it’s planning to host a bone marrow registry. A blood drive is also in the works.
“This will be a way to show my thanks,” said Chacon. “My daughter was so fortunate because her brother was a perfect match.”
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