Luke Neuhedel Foundation ©
Luke Neuhedel was born October 9, 1998. On August 1, 1999 he was diagnosed with stage 4 hepatoblastoma, a very rare liver cancer that affects 1 in a million children under the age of 1 each year. Luke's doctors told us he would not survive the first round of chemotherapy...but he did. Well, he won't be able to stand the second round,,,but he did. Well, we can do surgery now to remove the cantaloupe size tumor in his belly but... Always but...but...but...But we didn't believe in "but" -- we believed in Luke.
Luke kept plugging along for 32 months, ignoring the tubes sticking out of his chest and belly, pushing away the doctors when he wasn't in the mood, and laughing at his favorite characters --- Bear in the Big Blue House, the PowerPuff Girls, and Godzilla.
Carpe Diem with a Smile was Luke's perspective and that's how we lived. But we also lived with an eye on what was happening around us. Children going through treatment with no families. Foster children going through treatment as their families desperately tried to adopt them before they died. Parents going without so their child can have that McDonald's Happy Meal they crave.
So after Luke died March 27, 2002 we set up a charity to honor him and to help other children fighting cancer, fully believing that Pediatric Cancer Should Be an Oxymoron. LNF because an official charity in April 2002. Since then we have done what we could to help.
Volunteers participate in an annual fundraiser, a musical theater production since 2011, to raise funds to grant to children with cancer and their families to help with rent, insurance, gas, utility bills and more.
Luke's determination and optimism lives on in the volunteers and in the thousands of children who have received their love since 2002.