One of Port Washington’s third graders has been fighting a serious battle. She was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) and is on a long road of chemotherapy and treatment. Seraphina O’Brien is being treated on an outpatient basis at North Shore-LIJ Cohen Children’s Medical Center.
The Port Washington community has provided tremendous support for her family since her diagnosis in October. Fr
iends and staff at Manorhaven Elementary School all wore purple, her favorite color, on two separate “Port Supports Seraphina” days (facebook.com/portsupports seraphina) and sent her cards, photos and posters to her to let her know that everyone is thinking about and missing her. “Seraphina is doing well and is in her last round of intensive treatment before the maintenance phase,” said her mother, Felicity O’Brien. She will be out of school for the rest of third grade but, O’Brien said, “she has been working hard to keep up on her school work to rejoin her class when she hopefully returns to school in September. Also, Seraphina is looking forward to rejoining her Irish step dancing troupe, which she does with her younger sister Catherine.”
The O’Briens have also received support from the community through crowdfunding. This is the practice of funding a project, cause or event by raising money from donors on the Internet.
“One of our friends set up a GoFundMe account for us,” said O’Brien. “I would never have thought to set it up, but it actually has been a great help to cover out-of-pocket medical expenses. So far, the GoFundMe site has raised enough to cover almost a year and a half of the anticipated three years of medical expenses.” All the money raised goes directly to the O’Brien family to cover medical expenses.
GoFundMe was launched online nearly five years ago and has become one of the top crowdfunding or fundraising sites for personal causes and life events. Hundreds of thousands of people have raised more than $900 million collectively from more than 10 million donors through the GoFundMe website.
For more information about donating to help cover Seraphina’s medical expenses, go to www.gofundme.com/seraphinaobrien.
