Mitchell Elementary Students Raised How Much Money for a Good Cause?

students learned Monday that Lilly Winterbottom, a child cancer patient they've been raising funds for was a lot like them.

The 3-year-old loves playing with her dolls and her dollhouse, painting and coloring, playing hide and seek, and eating french fries and ice cream, and she wants to be a princess when she grows up. But Lilly is the only the 19th person in the United States ever to be diagnosed with mature peripheral T-cell lymphoma, a rare and aggressive type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Kate Mitchell Elementary students have been raising money for Iowans who have diseases similar to Lilly's in a Pennies for Patients program to spread awareness about the disease. They have raised more than $1,800 for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Lilly and her mother came to talk to the school in an assembly Monday.

Lilly was diagnosed in 2010, when she was just a year old.

On August 11, 2010, Lilly started having trouble breathing, said her mother, Natasha Winterbottom. Lilly’s parents took her to the emergency room.

“They found a giant tumor through her neck and chest,” Winterbottom said.

Lilly was admitted into intensive care, where a machine helped her breathe while chemotherapy treatments attacked the tumor.

 Because Lilly’s form of cancer was so rare, her doctors contacted other doctors from across the United States and from Japan and China for input about how to treat her.

Later in 2010, the Winterbottom family moved to Minnesota for five months so Lilly could have a bone marrow transplant.

 Lilly is now in remission, but her immune system is still recovering. She wears a mask to minimize the chance that she will catch a cold, which for Lilly would require a hospital stay.

She goes to the doctor once each month to be checked for cancer cells to ensure that she is still in remission.

Jodie Quick, Schools and Youth Coordinator for the Iowa Chapter of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), matches schools around the state with LLS Honored Heroes--patients or survivors of blood cancer--for Pennies for Patients fundraising campaigns.

Quick matched Lilly with because of the uniqueness of Lilly’s illness. As part of the Pennies for Patients campaign, Mitchell Elementary students raised $1,802 for LLS. The money will help blood patients in Iowa who, like Lilly, are registered with LLS, said Quick.

Students met Lilly during the assembly and their efforts were also honored. Five classes that raised more than $100 each will receive pennants to hang in their classrooms, the top classroom will be rewarded with a pizza party, and the school will receive a $150 Office Depot gift card.

For more information about the Iowa Chapter of LLS, visit their website.