4th Annual Make Every April Better 5k Walk and Fun Run

• Make Every April Better 5k Walk and Fun Run:- Run 3.1 Miles

Please join us on April 25th, 2015 at Tyler State Park for the 4th Annual Make Every April Better 5k Walk and Fun Run to raise funds for the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia to find a better cure for cancer. We need your continued support and dedication to create another successful year. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone join us for a great day in the park. please register now! at www.everyapril.org

The Make Every April Better Foundation is an organization inspired by April Eva Long. We are working hard to raise money to further research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

This organization is founded and managed by friends and family of April who want to change the future of Cancer treatments. We are working every day to raise money to find a better cure.

My name is Carla Long, the Founder of Make Every April Better, and I am April’s cousin closest in age. April and I were best friends and she was like a sister to me. I miss her dearly every day and I want to change the world, in her name, for future generations and other families, so that they don’t have to suffer through the same treatments as April and our family did.

April was born on April 27, 1982. April was beginning her freshman year of high school on September 25th, 1996, a Thursday night, when her parents noticed a lump by April’s collarbone. They went to see the family doctor who scheduled a CAT scan and then sent her to see an ENT who scheduled a biopsy. It was then that April was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease.

They then went to The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and met Dr. Grupp, one of April’s Oncologists. April went through chemotherapy and radiation treatments with her last treatment taking place in May 1997. We all thought her cancer was behind her, but just three months later she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease. Again!

This time April would go through a Stem Cell Transplant. A stem cell transplant is similar to a bone marrow transplant, but it does not require a donor and uses the person’s own cells. This time April spent many nights in the hospital and then a full month. She got sick and was in pain at times, but went through the treatment pretty well, we thought. Then just about a week and a half after coming home from the hospital on January 9th, 1998,
April was back in with complications from the chemotherapy drugs.

April died on February 6th from Pulmonary Fibroses, a side effect from the chemotherapy drugs used to cure her Hodgkin’s Disease just before her 16th birthday.

Although, Hodgkin’s Disease is considered curable it is April’s Funds hope and goal to bring awareness that funds are still needed to find a better cure with less severe side effects that led to the loss of April Long