Dear Friends and Family,
As you already know, our daughter Haley had a brain bleed shortly after birth, which led to her diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy.  Fortunately, Haley is doing incredibly well and we have aggressively treated her since birth with both therapy and more recently surgery. Unfortunately not all people who have Cerebral Palsy (CP) can be successfully treated through these methods and there is currently not cure for CP.  Fortunately, Cerebral Palsy is NOT a degenerative disease but rather a condition that is caused by damage to the brain.
CP simply describes an injury occurring in one’s brain at birth or before the age of two.  Because of the complexity or how each individual is affected, the severity and challenges faced by each can differ significantly.

Haley, as you know is a blessing in our lives.  However, raising a child with CP is not easy.  Every family with a special needs child faces tremendous financial, emotional and physical strain.  The average person with CP will incur over $1,000,000 in health-care costs in their lifetime.  Melanie and I have always been hopeful that we could reverse some of the neurological damage that has occurred.  We are fortunate that we live in a time where modern medicine and hope are advancing quickly.  We want you to help us advance it more quickly to help Haley and the 500-800,000 other Americans affected with Cerebral Palsy.
While Haley is highly functional and will grow up to be a productive member of society we still have concerns about if she will be able to drive and she still has trouble with visual processing that can not be corrected with glasses. It is our hope and prayer that we will be able to find a cure that will allow Haley to drive and ensure others who are more severely impacted live full lives.

I have joined the board of an organization Let’s Cure CP (www.letscurecp.org) that has found several doctors that can make these dreams become a reality for all children with CP, but they need funding and support for their trials and studies.

Let’s Cure CP is a non-profit organization that will fund Phase 1 clinical research using adult, bone marrow derived stem cells to treat chronic Cerebral Palsy.  We have already engaged Dr. James Carroll, the Chief of Pediatric Neurology at Medical College of Georgia and he believes that he can “reverse” some of the damage done to our kids brains by using these cells  (we have a video of him on our home page of our website).  First he has to complete his animal model study and prove the cells efficacy and safety.  Dr. Carroll’s life-changing work is the first of many studies that Let’s Cure CP  is supporting.
We have already raised $10,000 to help fund the first round of Dr. Carroll’s research but need much more funding to achieve our goal of finding a cure.
We desperately need your help!
You can support Let’s Cure CP by going to our website (www.letscurecp.org) and make a donation.  Every $25, $50 or $100 will help us change the lives of everybody with CP including Haley.

You can additionally support the Lets Cure CP by attending the Atlanta Tailgate Party on September 11th at Stats sports bar thrown by M3 summit and helping to support our organization. The cost to attend the event is $75 and $35 of it will go to Let’s Cure CP. There will be food and Drinks and it starts at 6:00 PM. If you live in Atlanta or visiting to attend the M3 Summit, it should prove to be a great time plus you’ll get to meet some of the coolest Dad and Man bloggers on the Net. You can by tickets at the M3 summit web site http://modernmediaman.com/conferencereg/ Make sure you purchase the Let’s Cure CP ticket. It is the same ticket as M3 VIP Closing Event ‘ATLANTA’S BIGGEST TAILGATE PARTY’ but $35 of the cost of the Let’s Cure CP ticket will goto Let’s Cure CP.
Please pass this information along to all of your friends and colleagues so we can become one stop closer to Curing CP!

Sincerely,
Kevin Metzger
Board Member
Let’s Cure CP

PS In the interest of full disclosure – Lets Cure CP has our application into the IRS for becoming a fully registered 501C3. According to the IRS we can operate as a 501C3 until they finish the review of our application and either approve or deny it. We have had our application in to the IRS since April and as of our last check they are only now reviewing the February applications. Our lawyers have asked that our application be expedited but as we are initially only doing private fund-raising and have not yet written for grant they have refused to expedite the application. We are talking with officials in Georgia to get them to help expedite the process. As stated above to date we have raised close to $20,000 and have already donated $10,000 fund a study at the Medical College of Georgia.

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