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Each year at Dance Blue you see the dancing...you watch the joy on the faces of kids battling
cancer and you hear the jubilation when the final fundraising amount is revealed. But
the dance marathon is just 24 hours out of 365 days of hard work to reach one goal. It's
a yearlong fundraising effort benefitting the Dance Blue pediatric oncology; hematology
clinic at the UK children's hospital....a clinic UK senior Alex Wade considers his home
away from home. I'm the family relations chair and so my responsibilities really encompass
being the liaison between the families that are in the Dance Blue clinic and then DanceBlue
itself. Wade does everything from sanitizing the areas where pediatric cancer patients
play to organizing games & crafts that help take their minds off the treatments they are
receiving. We also set up family events so that the kids in the clinic who aren't normally
able to fun things like kids would normally do have the opportunity to do that through
Dance Blue events. Alex and the volunteers he oversees spend countless hours with kids
who just want to be kids. I did it. You kind of feel like your apart of their life, and
part of their family, ultimately and you want to be there so much for them. No matter what
their going through I haven't in all the four years that I've been here heard them complain
one time about what their going through and I complain everyday about the stuff I'm going
through in college just taking hard classes which they would jump for joy to have that
opportunity just to not be in that clinic anymore. So while it may seem like the volunteers
are doing all the giving...Alex says the kids are actually the ones impacting them. Volunteering
in the clinic weekly, seeing them go through chemo, seeing them throw up sometimes. Seeing
them at their very worst...you're putting yourself in a vulnerable position. And what's
crazy is that going into the clinic that ends up being the best part of my week. They just
want to play with you and love you. And they just want to play Break the Ice, make some
crafts and be normal. And to be able to see that, to be able to see a picture of that
and that attitude makes me want to do that too. I just want to go play and love people
and not complain about what I'm going through because...that doesn't even touch what they're
going through or their families. And to be able to hear their story on top of that and
how they're persevering through that. I think its so uplifting. Lessons he'll take with
him next fall as UK College of Medicine student. It's about these kids. It's about these patients,
and I want to use every part of what I've learned and my opportunities and the things
that I've been blessed with to serve them whole heartedly, and I think without Dance
Blue it's hard to get that mindset really because you don't understand what the patients
are going through. Perspective he says he wouldn't have without UK's support of DanceBlue.
When you see that a university is so dedicated to something, again so much bigger than itself
and that it wants to provide it students with an opportunity to learn how to be a part of
service leadership... and then through that grow with each other, understand how to be
a leader by serving others... It makes me want to be a part of UK for the rest of my
life. For UKNow, I'm Amy Jones Timoney.