December 8, 1999
Girl creates special Christmas card
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Nine years and counting.
That's the scoop at the Morton household as they ponder their daughter Sarah's life since her last treatment for leukemia. Just 2 « years old when diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, the 14-year-old now sparkles with life while the memory of more than two years of 'pokes,' chemotherapy and doctor's visits is very dim.
Her family will celebrate her good health this year in a new way: by sending out holiday cards to friends and family that Sarah designed. In fact, thousands of families and businesses around the state who have never even met her will be sending out her cards to their family and friends.
Sarah's snowman in a window drawing was chosen by the Children's Leukemia Foundation of Michigan as one of five holiday card designs offered this year, sending her hopeful winter scene with her story on the back into thousands of households this year. And her sketch, painstakingly drawn and revised many times, has proven to be the most popular design this year; all 4,000 are already sold out.
"I was surprised when my card was chosen, pleased," said Sarah, a ninth-grader at West Junior High. "I do art for fun, I like to draw and make pottery."
While Sarah does take an art class each semester and doodles in her sketchbook at home, art is not her overwhelming interest. Instead of an art career she aspires to work with animals one day, although being a published artists has its perks.
"Her older sister is very artistically inclined and now Sarah can say, 'I'm published!,'" said Lynne Morton, referring to her older daughter, Jennifer, 16. "We'll be sending out a lot more cards this year than normal, I bought four boxes myself."
Leukemia was an overwhelming concern for the Garfield Township family for years, a forced and fast educational process families often go through when a member is threatened by a serious illness. They quickly became experts on the treatments and nuances of the illness after watching their lively toddler droop into a passive child who did not want to walk anymore. With a lingering, viral-like illness, aching legs and dramatic bruising all over her body, the soon discovered that Sarah presented a classic case of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia.
"It used to be all we thought about," recalled Jim. "The prognosis was very good, though, she was so young and the younger you are the better. But it was so long ago, we hardly think about it anymore."
The Morton family found support while undergoing their ordeal from the Children's Leukemia Society of Michigan, which they joined soon after Sarah's diagnosis. The medical and practical information plus the emotional support they received from the staff there helped them make it through. They still receive their newsletter, Lifelines, and it was there that Sarah saw the call for drawings and decided to enter a holiday card for consideration.
For most of its 47-year history, the Children's Leukemia Society of Michigan has sold holiday cards as a way to raise awareness about the disease and the foundation's work to help families struggling to overcome the illness. They print 20,000 holiday cards every year as a modest fund-raiser, 4,000 copies each of five different designs. Three of the designs are made by members and two by professional graphic artists.
"Our main goal with the cards is to increase awareness of the disease," said Glenn Trevisan, executive director of the Children's Leukemia Foundation of Michigan, which is headquartered in Southfield.
"Leukemia is unpredictable, not hereditary, not transmittable - it is a very random kind of disease. We serve 2,100 families right now, in every county of the state, and these cards help us let people know about us."