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Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation celebrates 25 years of impact, inspiration benefitting children with cancer
It was 25 years ago that Alex Scott held her first lemonade stand. Today, the foundation in her name has raised more than $300,000,000.
The little lemonade girl has had quite an impact on the world and children with cancer, kids like Philip Steigerwald.
"I really thought that he was going to die, and I had to come to terms with that," said Wendy Steigerwald, Philip's mother.
But Philip Steigerwald is alive because of Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation.
Right before his third birthday, he was diagnosed with neuroblastoma –the same cancer Alex Scott had.
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"I remember when he was getting the chemo, I was meeting with somebody about you know, all the troubles that we were having, and I remember saying to her, 'We could have had a good life,' and she's like, 'Why do you say that?' I said, 'Well, cause he's dying, he'll be dead,'" Wendy Steigerwald said.
After grueling treatments, doctors told the Steigerwalds that there was nothing more they could do. That is, until they learned of a clinical trial at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, partly funded by Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation.
"It's been a game changer. Kids who were destined to die are alive today," Dr. Yael Mossé, with the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
"Every morning he would take a pill, that's all he did, and it worked, it worked. I mean, it was a miracle," Wendy Steigerwald said.
Philip Steigerwald is not the only child alive today because of Alex and the foundation created in her name.
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Brynn was part of a clinical trial in Georgia, partially funded by Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation. She gets scans every six months, and a member of her family said things have been amazing since they ended the trial.
Lincoln and Abbie were in that trial. Lincoln is cancer-free! Plus, Abbie's tumor is stable, and she has a Master's degree and volunteers at a camp for children with cancer.
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Those clinical trials, those miracles started with Alex Scott and her idea for a front-yard lemonade stand. She wanted to help all kids with cancer, not just neuroblastoma.
"I thought we might find a cure for her," said Liz Scott, Alex's mother. "We knew a lot of kids with neuroblastoma, and I felt like it was something that we needed to put all the funding into. But Alex very smartly told me that that was selfish and that all kids want their cancer to go away."
"If Alex didn't push us to fund all types of childhood cancer research, we wouldn't be where we are today," Jay Scott said. "Because we would be a neuroblastoma organization. We would be much smaller. We would have been unable to help as many kids as we've been able to help."
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The Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation has funded 1,500 medical research grants at 150 institutions, and there are more than 240 ongoing clinical trials that are funded by them each year.
"If you're doing pediatric cancer research, you come to [the] Alex Lemonade Stand Foundation. We couldn't do our work without this kind of support," said Dr. Leonard Zon with Boston Children's Hospital.
Twenty-five years of making a difference, better treatments and safer cures. Twenty-five years of offering hope.
"That's where your hope comes from," Liz Scott said. "That there's going to be something new in the pipeline that your child is going to receive that's going to make their cancer go away. It didn't happen for Alex, but the fact that it's happening for other kids now because of Alex is beyond anything I can express what that means."
"Wendy would always say 'Show me one kid that survived this,' and that's what – we didn't have any hope and now Philip, is that hope for parents that are going through it now," Philip Steigerwald's father said.
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