Awaness items on sale!!!

All of our awareness items will be 50% off for the month of Decemeber!!!
Happy Holidays!!!! 

xoxoxo
Tammy

Happy Birthday Justin!

Every year on this date I wonder what we would be doing if you were still here! 
The boys wanted to go to the cemetery today but we will stop by tomorrow. 
I hope we meet our goal tomorrow at your Trivia Night!  We've worked so hard on this event and so many people have helped us get to where we are!  I pray that this medical research really helps us better understand this disease and help Dr's better understand it as well! 
I knew the second I got that phone call to hurry to the hospital and come say goodbye that I was not going to let you die and not do something about it.  I had to do something, we were so misinformed and I do not want any other family to feel that way!  There was nothing on the Internet to help us understand what you were going through and now because of you and your story there is!  We can warn people of how serious this really is and what steps to take and it's all because of you!  We had to lose you in order to do this.  I know that now but I can tell you though I don't like it I understand.   
Antonio knows your name and face but I wish he knew YOU.  Kristiana will look at me sometimes and say, "Mom uncle Justin held me when I was a baby and he loved me."  He sure did is all I can say back to her.   You use to make me so made before you got sick.  But now I know you were just being a teenager and I know I'm in for the same crap with Allen, Cruz, Kristiana and Antonio!  Especially Antonio.  He is our little Justin all over!
OH and guess what!  You know how we fought about Mike and him playing for Nebraska and how you said Nebraska stinks!!  Well he made it onto the Rams!!  SOOO NAH! In your face!!!

We love you with our entire hearts and we will see you again!

xoxoxoxoxo
Tammy, Tony, Allen, Cruz, Kristiana and Antonio

Gift Cards needed

Our Trivia is a little more than 2 weeks away!! 
We have sold 17 tables and have 9 more avaiable!!! 
If you are in our area please share this fundraiser with all your friends!
Signs will be going up all around Eureka tomorrow!

We have some GREAT items for our silent auction!  Some of the items we have received are

Securtiy system with monitoring discount
Coach Hand Bag
Signed mini Rams helemt
2 signed basballs from the Cardinals (Allen Craig & Jon Jay)
2 Fred bird shirts
Cardinals blanket
Cardinals fitted Hat
2 Build A Bears and $10 gift card
3 Different Avon Baskets
Gift cards to Harvest Resturant
Igloo Cooler Set
Cub Cake baskets
Scratch Off Loto
Branson Get Away Package
and much much more! 
I do not want to list it all out here I would like some to be a surprsise!!!

One thing we are looking for is Gift Cards (any amount) to stores, restuarnts or gas stations.  Any where really! 
Just send them to
Tammy Valencia
11695 Castle Ranch Rd
Desoto, MO 63020

Our Goal is to raise $3,000 and we are well on our way!!!

Help us fill those last 9 tables!!!

Lemierre's Video

At the top of our webpage I posted a Lemierre's Video I found this morning.
I really like this video because I can understand what the Dr. is saying.  Sometimes it is hard to understand what Dr.s are saying because of the technical words they use. ;0)
Check it out and pass it along to others!

Trivia Night ~ Tables will go fast!

I will be putting up flyers and posters all over Eureka next week as well as putting ADs in the Newspapers all over St. Louis. 
I am hoping once we do this the tables will be selling fast!  So this is to all Friends and Family in the St. Louis area.  Please get your tables reservations in to me ASAP.  I would hate for you to wait until the last minute and then I have to tell you we are full!  ;0( 
xoxoxoxoxo

Our goal with this fundraiser is to raise $3,000!!!!  We need $4,000 but our goal is $3,000.

Help us meet our goal!!!
We will have mulligans for sale ~ those that do not know what they are, these are basically a guarantee right answer!  ;0)
We will also play Heads/Tails throughout the night and have 2 ~ 50/50 raffles  
There will also be Lemierre's items for sale such as T Shirts, wrist bands, stickers, ribbons and other items.
We will have a table set up for our silent auction baskets!  Some of the things we have received so far are:
A Baking Basket
Hot Air Balloon Ride
A Home Security System
31 Tote bag
2 tickets to Silver Dollar city along with 2 tickets to the Steam boat Branson Belle
Avon items
Premier Design Jewelry pieces
Build A Bear items
Gift cards to places all around St. Louis including
Hot topic
Bedbath n beyond
Barnes n Noble
Harvest Restaurant

We have much much more coming!!!! 

If you would like to put together a basket OR just donate a gift card to anywhere; gas stations, restaurant, local place of business, please
just let me know by Sept 15th. 
THANK YOU!!!!

Fundraiser TIME!

This September we are going to hold a Trivia Night  to help us raise money for Dr Robert Centor's research! 

I started the Donation letter today!  I will be mailing this letter to many companies here in St. Louis.  If you know of any company (does not have to be in the St. Louis area) that you think would donate to us for this event please email me or leave a comment here. This can be any thing examples are, drinks (alcohol or non alcohol), snacks, items for Silent Auction or Prizes, money or anything else that can be thought of.

I will post more details about this Trivia Night in a few weeks.  Our plan is to make this a FUN trivia night and ask questions that any age group should be able to answer.  ;0)  I've been to plenty of Trivia Nights and thought to myself "wow this really makes me feel dumb!"  I think it would be really fun to have a DJ set up after the Trivia Night and we can dance and hang out afterwards. 

The way I have seen them work in the past is you sell tables. For example you have a table that can seat 8-10 people and they can buy it for $120 - $160.  Those details will be figured out very shortly.

Justin's Birthday is Sept 28th and I would love to have this event on the 29th hopefully it will work out for that date.       
xoxoxoxo

Slides

I just realized the company that we had our picture slides through on this site and our Lemierresyndrome.com site is no longer in business. ;0( So I will be working on getting more pictures up of our items we have for sale as well as the pictures of Justin.

Donation Sent!

I put a check in the mail for Dr. Robert Centor and his medical team for their study! I'm really excited that we get to help them with their study! Thank you to everyone that has purchased awareness items and helped us in our fundraising efforts. We are still trying to come up with ideas for more fundraisers. If you have an idea or heard of something another Non - Profit has done and you think it would be a big success email me! ;0) Sunflwz2@Yahoo.com I received a phone call from my cousin the other day and she heard of a Zombie 5K Run. She heard they were looking for Charities to help so I emailed them and we'll see what happens. It looks really cool! www.runforyourlives.com I would love to be a apart of this event. Pretty scary stuff! Tammy

Fundraisers

Many of you have contacted me in the last 4 years and have expressed to me your thoughts of this horrible disease. Some of you are survivors, some of you family members of lost loved ones and some just learned about the disease through our efforts. First off I want to thank you all for contacting me and expressing your thoughts and encouragement to us. It's because of all your emails and comments that we have continued our efforts and our fight against this disease. For the last 4 years our fight was to make people more aware of this disease, in the hopes it would reach Dr's so we could diagnose this faster. The past 4 years I have been in contact with Dr Robert Centor. Many of you already know him and his website. www.medrants.com He has spent over 30 years studying pharyngitis and all those nasty bacterias. I approached him in Jan asking if he knew of anyone doing a study or needing funds to help start a study and coincidentally that is when he told me about what he has going on. He has a new study going on right now for Fusobacterium necrophorum pharyngitis. This is what he had to say about his new study "We hope to describe the signs and symptoms of fusobacterium pharyngitis. Currently too many physicians withhold antibiotics from adolescents and young adults with significant pharyngitis. We want to change the approach to adolescent and young adult pharyngitis and hopefully prevent the development of Lemierre syndrome." He needs funds to help run this study and I told him we would be willing to help. Many of you have contacted me asking how to run or set up a fundraiser in your area. Since we are the only Charity or Non Profit for Lemierre's it is very hard for us to set up a walk that happens in cities all over the US. I just came back from a fundraiser a company held in PA last weekend. It was a huge success and it will really help towards our goal in this study. We have done a few fundraisers here in St. Louis that have been great we held a Walk, a paintball tournament, a dance, the event at Hidden Valley a few years ago was fun and brought in the largest donation we have received yet! If any of you have ideas of how we can get others involved in cities all across the the US as well as in the UK we would love to hear them. Please email me as soon as you have an idea. If any of you want to set up a fundraiser in your area but do not know how to start or what to do I would be willing to share my thoughts and opinions with you. Any ideas or thoughts you all have would be greatly appreciated! Thank you for your emails, thoughts, prayers and helping us fight this battle!

Our trip to PA

Chrissy and I made the trip to PA this past weekend to accept a donation from a company whose employee developed Lemierre's this past Nov. Every year this company holds a fundraiser for a charity that hits close to home to one of their employee's. This year they chose us since their employee/friend Marc developed lemierre's not too long ago. Everyone was very nice and I love that they do this every year! This was their 22nd year holding this fundraiser. Every year they choose 3 men and 3 women and they hold a BBQ lunch and bake sale and instead of the employees paying for the food they put the money in the canister of the person they want to win. I'll give you one guess on who was crowned King, Marc! ;0) I will post pictures as soon as I receive them. This donation they gave to us is really going to help with our first research study!

Yep that's right Dr. Robert Centor is starting a research study on why young adolescents developed Lemierre's, why the Fusobacterium necrophorum grows with some of the patients with sore throats and not the others...? We are going to help fund this research which means we will be holding fundraisers in the very near future. I am also putting together a database in my Yahoo account with every person who has contacted me in the last 4 years in regards to lemierre's. I will be sending out an email to every person in that database asking for their help in fundraising. Hopefully I will be done with this by the end of this week. We need ideas. As well as help holding some of these fundraisers in other parts of the U.S. Maybe your company has a charity they donate to each year, maybe this year it could be to us to help with this study! Or maybe you want to hold a BBQ or a walk or some other event to help us raise funds for this study. We would really appreciative of any ideas or any thoughts anyone has. Check out Dr. Centor's blog at www.medrants.com Thank you!! Lots of love, Tammy

Exciting things going on!!

We were approached by a LS Survivor to be a part of his companies fundraiser this year!  Every year this man's employer holds a fundraiser event and donates all the proceeds to a charitable organization and this year they chose us!!!  We will be flying to PA Feb 17th to accept the check!  This is the 2nd company to approach us to be a part of their fundraiser! HOPEFULLY there will be more to come,  I'm really excited about it because we have a pretty huge project coming up that needs some serious funds in order to pull it off!  We are going to have a meeting in Feb to discuss fundraising opportunities in the very near future! 
After our meeting I will be able to tell you what our new project is!! 

If you think your company would like to hold an event or help us with our fundraisers let me know!  OR if you have any questions about how to hold a fundraiser or need ideas in what to do email me.  sunflwz2@yahoo.com

I really appreciate all everyone has done to help us!  Hopefully this will be our next step into getting people all around the US and then some to hold fundraisers to help us and our project.  We WILL succeed in getting the word out about this disease as well as diagnosing and treating it faster so no one has to suffer the pain as we and so many other families have!  


xoxoxoxo
Tammy

Sweet Caroline

Prayers needed for a sweet little 3 year old - Caroline. She is battling Lemierres and was in a drug induced comma in Fleming Island, FL! I know my brother is watching over her and her Dr's right now!

Caroline we are all praying for you! xoxoxoxoxo

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/carolinekneisley/journal

Looks like she is doing a little better today.

Lemierre's was on HOUSE!!!!

I can not believe I missed it. Now that I have 4 VERY active kids I never get to sit and watch TV. I learned from Stephanie Dean that Lemierre's was shown on House tonight!!! I am super excited but super bummed that I missed it.
You can watch episodes that are 8 days old on their website so it looks like next Tues I will be watching House on my computer!! I remember when we emailed them asking to add Lemierre's to their story line because it is such a strange unknown about disease!
I believe it is the episode called "Confessions" I do not think he ends up having Lemierre's but atleast it is mentioned!

xoxoxox
Tammy

Happy 21st Birthday!

Happy 21st birthday little brother!
I hope you celebrated big in Heaven today! Kristiana was blowing you kisses while we were at your grave site. Cruz said he remembers wrestling with you and I told him so do I. Except I remember getting mad at you for getting the boys all hyped up. Kristiana yells at me "MOM do not get mad at my Uncle Justin! He loves you and you should love him too an be happy, not mad at him!" ha-ahaha-aha
I told her I do love you, I love you and miss you very much, but I did get so frustrated with you when you made Allen and Cruz all hyper. ;0)
They love you and miss you as much as I do. They say they talk to you and they hope you hear them.
Antonio is my mini Justin. I hope he doesn't give me as much trouble as you did mom and dad. ;0)
Justin the Bee we love you and miss you.
I'm sure your embarrassed hearing that nick name.
Love your oldest sister,
Tammy