For the ninth year in a row, the HemOnc Holiday Elves are busy stitching and stuffing mittens and stockings.
Sponsored by the Division of Hematology/Oncology, the Holiday Stockings for Chemotherapy Patients Project began in 1999 as a way to brighten the holidays of 75 children going through chemotherapy. The program later was expanded to include adults.
Since then, volunteers have sewed and filled more than 3,425 stockings and mittens with everything from crossword puzzles to hats for children, teenagers and adults at the Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Ann Arbor Veteran’s Administration.
Chemotherapy patients receive their gifts during a two-week period in December. In a note expressing her gratitude for the project, one patient writes, “I had an infusion yesterday evening and was presented with a stocking full of goodies. I just wanted to say thank you so much for making my day significantly brighter. God bless you all who provide this service to people who would much rather be somewhere else.”
This year a record-breaking 700 stockings are being made, 600 of them for adults.
The project is still $2,000 away from its fund-raising goal and in desperate need of journals to fill the stockings.
“We only put in things that patients can use while they’re being treated,” says Susan Blaisdell, administrative specialist in Hematology/Oncology and “Chief Elf” of the project. “If people want to help, journals are the most expensive item going into the stocking, and one of the most important. They give patients an outlet.”
More information on the project go to www.med.umich.edu/stockings/index.htm.
