Saturday Volunteer Day

Every second Saturday of the month Family House hosts a Volunteer Day during which we take care of various projects around the house. Last Saturday was a huge success as we had fourteen wonderful individuals show up to work.   

Bernice, Samantha, and Rebecca, reorganized the linen closets and made sure everything had a place. Victor, Aaron, Gordon, and Adam, helped make the house look new again by painting 4 bedroom door frames. Kristina and Marina, gave Family House that special home feeling by baking banana muffins for all of the families. Julian, Mardoux , Erica, Billy, and Emily, helped keep our communal toys safe for the children by disinfecting them and the communal areas. They also helped completely restock the house of supplies so the families would have everything they could possibly need. We would not be able to provide the level of comfort and support for our families that we do if it was not for volunteers like them. 

So a big THANKS goes out to all of you who helped make our August Volunteer Saturday another huge SUCCESS! 

Keeping Family House Clean

WorkLink, ARC of San Francisco, Toolworks, and Employment Plus, are all organizations that send us a group of smiling volunteers throughout the week to disinfect the 10th Avenue location from top to bottom Monday through Friday. 

When housing individuals who are undergoing treatment for cancer and other serious diseases, keeping a safe and clean house is of the utmost importance. Many of the children staying here have compromised immune systems due to the treatments they are receiving at UCSF, and for those individuals even a simple cold can be extremely dangerous. The individuals who come to disinfect the house day after day, are helping us foster a home that these children can reclaim their play time in. A place where they can forget about the disease that brought them here in the first place.

As if protecting our kids from germs wasn't enough, these volunteer groups are special in their own right. WorkLink, ARC, Toolworks, and Employment Plus are all organizations that help individuals with physical and mental disabilities find jobs and volunteer opportunities in their local community. These individuals come in every morning, with a smile on their face and open arms for a warm embrace. Some of them, like Danny, take public transit switching buses and spending the extra hour or two it takes to cover the distance from their home to ours to come provide this service for our families.

At our Volunteer Appreciation BBQ earlier this summer, I realized just how lucky we were to be graced by their presence. I looked around as Danny and the others danced out back in a circle. Their selfless love, and earnest hope for the good in life radiates from them with every smile and laugh. Their dedication to Family House and to the families who stay here is undeniable, and they make us all want to work a little harder to believe in the BEAUTY of EVERY DAY. 

Thank you to our 2011 Summer Interns!

Family House would like to sincerely thank our 2011 Summer Interns, Jill Ferguson and Tyler Scurr. Tyler's upbeat personality and willingness to tackle any task created a warm and positive experience for families and volunteers at Family House. Jill was able to bring the community of Family House to the world by creating the Family House blog: http://www.familyhouseinc.blogspot.com/ and the Family HouseTumblr: http://www.familyhouseinc.tumblr.com/  and whas been a tremendous help to our business office. We miss you both already!

Volunteer of the Month!

Ariana Fischer spent over 100 hours volunteering at Family House this summer leading our Summer Volunteer Program and supporting Family House at various events. Her enthusiasm and compassion for our families truly encompasses what it means to be a volunteer at Family House!

It's the Little Things that Count...

Matthew Farley was first diagnosed with lukemia at the age of five. After being diagnosed Matthew was treated for his cancer at Sutter Health in Sacramento. The people at Sutter worked fast and Matthew's body showed its strength when only thirty days after his diagnosis he bested the cancer and went into remission. As is often done, Matthew was told to go ahead and finish his treatment to insure the cancer would not come back. Matthew endured chemo and radiation for three years to finish up his treatment plan. Matthew had only been out of treatment for a year when he was given a harsh new diagnosis. In March of this year Matthew was told that he had contracted Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS), a disorder that causes the bone marrow to fail. He needed a bone marrow transplant.

Matthew's MDS is a cause of one of the treatments he received for his Lukemia. There is only a 0.1% chance that patients receiving this treatment will contract MDS. Matthew's doctor's recommended him to UCSF because of their specialization in bone marrow transplants. The Farley family found their way to Family House on July 4th. The next day Matthew went into the hospital to prep for his transplant. On July 13th, Matthew received his transplant. He has been recovering in the hospital ever since.

 At Sutter Health the Farley family stayed at a number of other facilities for families with children who are receiving medical treatments. He said that, "Family House is so much more accommodating then where we have stayed before. You do a great job of facilitating families here, like how you have a laundry facility on every floor at the 10th House."

Dealing with life-threatening diseases like Matthew's can be disheartening, but Darrel told me how they stay positive.

"Parents survive off of other families, and other parents...the other day my wife and I were putting groceries away in the communal kitchen with some of the other families and we started to talk, and out of that comes laughter. Here we all know what you are going through it is the same thing every day, so it is the little things that break up the monotony of our week that help bring us the most joy."

The Real Deal - Family House makes good TV

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The Real Deal TV series did a spotlight on Family House a year ago, this is the show as it was aired from Youtube...watch and see just how important and impactful Family House is for the Families who stay here.

Transformational Change - by Greg Kuhn

In an instant a life situation can change. No one ever thinks that a serious illness will touch themselves or their family. One’s perspective on mortality and life can flip in the blink of an eye. At the age of eight I was sitting in the bathtub after a karate lesson. I noticed that I had blood spurts forming all over my body and the bruises on my legs and arms were growing before my eyes. My family and I immediately went to the hospital and found that my blood counts were plummeting. About a month later I was diagnosed with A-Plastic Anemia, a rare auto-immune blood disorder. My body had lost all of the vital blood cells that help run my body. Without platelets I was unable to clot blood and stop bleeding, without red blood cells there was not enough oxygen reaching all the cells of my body, and without white blood cells I could no longer fight infections. At eight years old I was dying.

I was very fortunate to be admitted into UCSF. There at the Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplant Unit I was treated by an amazing staff of professionals. They found a donor with a perfect match, my sister. Within a year I had a successful transplant and was allowed to return home.

Our family was very lucky that we lived on the peninsula less than thirty minutes from the hospital. The amount of time that my family spent during the course of my illness at UCSF would have been unsustainable had we lived far away.

I returned to UCSF recently to give thanks and be of help in any way I could, it was then that they directed me towards Family House as a place where I could give my time. For these past few months I have been a volunteer at Family House. I can easily say that I am so very grateful to have the pleasure of meeting all of the wonderful guests and staff that provide such an essential service for the some of the patients at UCSF. During such trials that may befall upon a family, the importance of the resources and integrity that Family House offers and stands by cannot be summed up in words. This experience has helped deepen my understanding of others and in turn myself, and is a testament of the transformational change that is possible in this world.