Thank you to everyone involved last Saturday! RUN Day Without Doctors Hosted by the National Ability Center! We have a ton of pictures to share!

September 21, 2015 1:58 pm 2 Comments 9

Words cannot express how special last Saturday was for RUN! With the amazing generosity of the National Ability Center, we had a day of fun for our local rare and undiagnosed families. Thank you to all of the families that came out for the day!

THANK YOU to EVERYONE that made last Saturday’s event a success! We are excited for you to see the photos!

NAC: Gail Loveland, Jeremy Loveland, Kelley Fitzpatrick and all of the other volunteers and staff that worked on Saturday. Thank you!

Thank you to Crystal Shearman and Nicholas Miller of the feature film, Undiagnosed: Medical Refugees, for donating your time and expertise to film the event! Thank you for making Ava’s favorite dessert! Thank you to Crystal’s mother, Cindylee Shearman, for donating her time at the event.

Thank you to the NBA Utah Jazz families that helped support our event yesterday. Lori Davis Jones and her daughter, Bella Jones. Becky Lindsey and her daughter, Jesse Lindsey, Linda Luchetti.  Thank you for volunteering to help and for your donations of food and drinks.

Thank you to Megan Nuffer and Melissa Sills for all of your help with the event as well as your generous donations of food and drinks. Thank you for helping me set up and for photographing the event!

Thank you to Diane Might for your very generous donation to the NAC. Thank you to Cristina Might of NGLY1 for bringing us all together through Utah Rare.

Thank you to all of the families that donated to the NAC. I appreciate it more than you know. Thank you to Season Atwater of Aware of Angels for photographing the event.

Thank you to Kirsten Stewart and Charlie Ehlert for coming to the event to continue following our family on our journey with the University of Utah Health Sciences units: the Utah Genome Project, the Division of Pediatric Medical Genetics, the Office of Public Affairs, and the nurses at the Center for Clinical & Translational Science.

Thank you to Sweet Country in Draper for donating baked goods!

Please enjoy all of these incredible photos taken by Season Atwater with Aware of Angels. We also added the pictures from our camera. 

Thank you to the following families for attending!

The Atwaters
The Finlaysons
The Georges
The Jones
The Kanarowski
The McClellan
The Mights
The Nuccitelli
The Nuffers, Sills and Normans
The Sampsel, Kinneys and Hulses
The Websters
The Valdezs

“Thank you Gina for such a great time up at the ability center. My family loved it. It was so fun to be up there doing activities as a family and having Leah included with us. That means so much to us! Thank you for inviting us. It was so great to see all the RUN families. It felt so good to connect with all the families. It’s amazing to be around others who just understand our lives. We truly need that love and support! Thanks again! It was great to see you and your family again!
Much love”
April  McClellan
“My first event with RUN was unforgettable. Having the chance to meet other families going through similar trials as me and my family was reassuring. There is always something to be grateful for, even in bad situations. I am grateful to be apart of the RUN family and having the chance to meet other families and partake in the fun events Saturday. I look forward to see what the future has in store for our RUN family.”
Ciara Webster
“Struggling with a rare/undiagnosed condition can be an isolating experience for a patient and their entire family. RUN’s event at the National Ability Center was an emotional, unique and fun opportunity for our family to connect with others and enjoy a sense of normalcy. We are all looking forward to the next RUN event!”
Cristina Might
 “We love you, Gina, and we are so glad that we can help, even if it is in small ways. Thank you for being a pillar in the rare & undiagnosed community, despite everything you and your family are going through. You are a strong and amazing woman, we all aspire to be more like you:)”
Crystal and Cindylee Shearman 

“Last Saturday my family had the opportunity to attend an event hosted by RUN and the Ability Center in Park City. With a child who has disabilities, it is not often that we get to play together as a family. The ability center gave all of us a chance to play and bond as a family with activities everyone enjoyed! The staff is wonderful and so willing to accommodate our needs-thank you RUN!” Season Atwater

 “Thank you so much for having us. You did an awesome job with everything, everyone seemed to have a great time. If I could sum it up, Saturday was a day for Harlie to do things she hasn’t been able to do in a year. She was able to enjoy time with family and get to meet other families that have had their worlds turned upside down with a sick rare child, just like us. It was good to see all the kids smiling having fun.”-Stephanie Valdez

“We were able to witness people that have been through the unimaginable, conquer the impossible.”
Megan Nuffer and Melissa Sills
“I think the girls were able to see and experience moments of awareness today…a humbling experience for all of us…thank you.”
Lori Davis Jones

 

If you would like to download the pictures from the event or you would like to upload your pictures, please email gina@rareundiagnosed.org. We have over 500 pictures of the event in a shared folder!

 

About Gina:

Gina Szajnuk was born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin and moved to Salt Lake City, UT, where she serves as the Co-founder and Executive Director for the Rare & Undiagnosed Network (RUN). Her three beautiful children, each of whom live with a rare and undiagnosed disease, continue to inspire and motivate her as she fights for clinical whole genome sequencing to be covered by insurance companies. Gina was recently asked to be the Utah State Ambassador for NORD (National Organization for Rare Diseases). She served on the Executive Committee for Utah Rare 2015. She is on the Program Committee for the National Ability Center.