For the kids: Bad dancing can save lives
Junior Molly Dredge was in the next room over when she heard her little sister’s scream from the kitchen.
Dredge’s sister Sophie, who was then 2 years old, had turned over a skillet of boiling vegetable oil onto herself. The direct impact was to her chest, but the scalding hot oil had also splashed up onto her face and run down her arms and legs.
Dredge, who was 14 years old at the time, said she remembers helping her mother call an ambulance and aiding her sister. They put Sophie in the shower and ran cold water onto her to cool her down. She remembers feeling surprisingly calm during the process.
“If I would have realized how serious the situation was, I probably would not have been able to help,” Dredge said. “But at the time, I didn’t realize how bad it was.”
Sophie was taken to Iowa Methodist Medical Center, but when the doctors realized how serious the situation was, they realized she needed more critical care. She was then sent to the University of Iowa Hospital in Iowa City.
According to Dredge, Sophie was in the burn/trauma unit for a month and had to undergo five surgeries. They had to remove the damaged skin from her burns to prevent infections, and then they used donated skin to temporarily graft the damaged areas. When she had healed enough, they were able to use her own skin to permanently graft her burns.
Before Dredge and her other sisters went to visit Sophie at the hospital, they were fortunate enough to have seen photos and knew what to expect.
Sophie Dredge. Photo by: Nyawal Tutlam-Tongo
“It’s kind of scary when you’re used to your happy, healthy 2-year- old sister running around, playing and laughing, then you see pictures like those,” Dredge said.
Dredge said she had always had a passion for caring for others, so she helped as much as she could with her sister’s rehab. In fact, her sister’s injury had a major influence on her decision to take up the nursing major at Grand View.
During the family’s time at the University of Iowa Hospital, the topic of Dance Marathon came up a lot. Some of the people involved in Sophie’s care told her that she and her sisters should get involved. All three of Dredge’s younger sisters were and still are competitive dancers, so the idea of dancing to help save a child’s life really appealed to them.
Dredge’s mother said that during their time at the hospital, the funds that Dance Marathon had raised had been helping them out behind the scenes, and they had not even known it. Throughout Sophie’s physical therapy, she was provided with various forms of entertainment. Those, she said, were provided through Dance Marathon’s fundraising.
It was when Dredge came to Grand View and learned about the Dance Marathon chapter on campus that she decided to get involved. Last year, she attended the event as a dancer, but this year she has taken on the role of sponsorship co-director.
“I think Dance Marathon is just an incredible way to come together and celebrate these kids and what they go through,” Dredge said. “I know that if we didn’t have the support from our community when Sophie was in the hospital, her outcome could have been so much different.”
Dredge’s experience with her sister’s hospitalization opened her eyes to what ill and injured children and their families go through. The things Dance Marathon does to help these children and families.
“For families to be able to come here and see that there is a whole community of college students that are backing them and supporting them and raising money is pretty incredible.”
She is truly motivated by the struggles these families endure and the fights the children face.
“There are so many families who have it so much worse than mine did,” Dredge said. “I don’t want the focus to just be on Sophie because they need recognition too.”
A Cause Worth Fighting For
When Shelby Hanson, a senior nursing major, was two months old, her parents discovered a lump in her stomach about the size of a baseball.
Before Hanson could even walk or talk, she was diagnosed with stage-four neuroblastoma cancer. Tumors were spreading through her sympathetic nervous system, and something had to be done to stop it.
Shelby Hanson, senior nursing major and executive director of GV Dance Marathon. Photo by Nyawal Tutlam-Tongo
Too young for radiation, Hanson had to go through chemotherapy and was taken into surgery twice.
By the time she could remember anything, she was finished with treatments and was cancer free.
Hanson said she recalls nothing of the experience, other than a few follow- up appointments. There is a possibility that the cancer could return and there is a chance chemotherapy will have
delayed effects on her health down the road. Yet, Hanson said she prefers not to worry about it and to live every day to the fullest.
Hanson has known about Dance Marathon her entire life. She heard more about it during her time at Children’s Cancer Connection’s summer camp, Camp Heart Connection. Some of the kids there were like her and had dealt with cancer in the past, many of them were still battling cancer. Hanson was able to see the day-to-day struggle these children were going through firsthand.
“I’ve been able to relate to others who have cancer more because of
my friends,” Hanson said. “Not from personal experiences but from their experiences.”
Hanson said she has lost a number of friends to cancer, which motivates her to work harder toward helping other children who battle the life- threatening disease.
“The reason I dance is because I’m a survivor and I want other kids to be survivors, too,” Hanson said.
This year, Hanson has taken on the role as executive director and says she is excited for what they have been able to achieve over the year.
GV dance marathoners with their “Miracle Kiddos.” Photo contributed by GV Dance Marathon
How It All Started
Dance Marathon has been around for many years. It has touched the lives of many children and their families across America as they struggle with illnesses and injuries.
According to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, the very first Dance Marathon took place in 1991 in
memory of a young boy named Ryan White. He contracted AIDS when he was 13 years old from a tainted hemophilia treatment. He passed away a month before he was to graduate from high school. Some of his friends, wanting to honor White’s memory, organized Indiana University Dance Marathon and raised more than $10,000 in the first year.
Soon after, four other U.S. universities took up the fight against pediatric illness. One of those universities was the University of Iowa.
Grand View Assistant Professor of Education Jennifer Ulie-Wells said she was a student at U of I when the first Big Event took place on campus. Because she was a dancer, her residential assistant convinced her to come to the event. The experience, Ulie- Wells said, was thought-provoking and life-changing.
“While there was dancing, they also had families get up on stage and share their stories,” Ulie- Wells said. “Being a young person, I had never had any exposure to what some of these families were going through. Some families got up there and they had lost their child to cancer or a variety of other illnesses, so as they were talking about these things I was just so emotionally consumed.”
Over the past 25 years, Dance Marathon has become a major movement that has spread to universities across North America. Today, according to Miracle Network, Dance Marathon’s website, the movement has more than one million participants and has raised a cumulative total of more than $150 million.
January 2017 will officially mark four years that Dance Marathon has been at Grand View. According to Ulie-Wells, Grand View Dance Marathon resulted from the work of two students who had heard about the program and wanted to get involved. With the help of co-advisors Ulie-Wells and Heidi Pries, Grand View students, Jess Short and Stephanie Peterman, were able to put together an executive board and launch their own Dance Marathon.
Photo contributed by GV Dance Marathon
The Big Event is the single event that Dance Marathon works toward all year. It marks the self-appointed deadline for their goal. During the Big Event, attendees are urged to dance or stand for the entire six hours. All chairs are removed, and no caffeine is offered. According to Pries, this is, to some level, supposed to simulate the discomfort and exhaustion ill children and their families undergo.
Last year, Grand View raised over $20,000, nearly double what they had accomplished the year before. Hanson said that GV Dance Marathon’s goal this year is to reach $30,000.
Moving Forward
GV Dance Marathon does not only focus on children with cancer. The children they directly support are called their “Miracle Kiddos,” and their illnesses and injuries vary from microduplication to third-degree burns.
Since Dance Marathon was launched at Grand View, according to Hanson, they have been able to double their fundraising from year to year.
According to Ulie-Wells, all the money the students raise goes directly to University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (UIHC) to help out children with illnesses and assist the various needs of the families.
“If parents have to be gone from work and they need gas money to get to the hospital for treatment or they have to be at the hospital for a month and they have no place to stay,” Ulie-Wells said, “the money helps with that.”
Recently, a room in the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital was named after Grand View Dance Marathon for their contributions. The $25,000 room was designed to allow families to be a part of their loved one’s care before treatments and procedures.
Just like Hanson, Pries said, all the students involved with Dance Marathon have been inspired to help the children and make a difference.
“That’s really what it’s about,” Pries said. “It’s about them being very passionate about a cause and coming together and making a difference.”
According to Hanson, GV Dance Marathon has taken huge steps in the past four years and has recruited many more members. However, she said she believes they still have a long way to go. Because the program is still so new to Grand View they are working on raising awareness and letting people know what they do.
Ulie-Wells said it is a struggle to keep students educated about Dance Marathon because there are always new freshmen coming in. Many students get distracted by other events and things going on around campus and don’t put much consideration into Dance Marathon.
“There’s a lot of great events at Grand View, but this is an event that can change a life,” Ulie-Wells said. “I really want to see more people come and stay for the entire event; because six hours of standing on your feet pales in comparison to what children have to go through with treatments.”
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