Campaign aims to get plush ducks to every young cancer patient

By BRUCE SMITH
Associated Press Writer

CHARLESTON, S.C. - Gabe Sipos dealt with doctors, pain and scary equipment when diagnosed with cancer more than four years ago just shy of his first birthday. But the ordeal was made easier with Chemo Duck - a yellow stuffed duck complete with hospital scrubs, a head bandanna and a tiny IV line for chemotherapy.

The plush duck also helped his mother, Lu, who came up the idea, learn to deal with the deadly disease.

Now, with the help of a Charleston-based foundation, the mother from Nashville, Tenn., hopes to get one of the ducks to every young child in America battling cancer.

"As a parent I was lost and didn't know what my role was in his treatment," Sipos said Wednesday before her son gave away the first duck donated as part of the national program. "It was a way I could teach him and in teaching him, I gave myself a role - I got the parental role back."

Sipos, with her husband Nick, formed a nonprofit organization working with the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt University to get the duck to cancer patients.

ASCEND, which stands for the Anne Scandalios Cancer Ends Now Directive after a Charleston woman who died of breast cancer, is now working to get the ducks to patients nationwide.

Gabe, now 5 and cancer-free, played with a green Power Ranger on the floor at the Children's Hospital at the Medical University of South Carolina while his mother and others explained the program to reporters.

He didn't say much when his mom held him in her arms and he handed the first duck to 3-year-old Zachary Moore of Summerville.

Zachary, clinging to his own mother in turn and with a chemotherapy tube in his arm, took the duck and grinned brightly. He then kept pushing the duck into the face of his mother, Kimberly, for her to kiss.

Zachary, diagnosed with cancer about 18 months ago, has to come to the hospital about once a month for chemotherapy or other treatment, his mother said.

"It's terrifically difficult to educate a young child about what's going to happen to them," Sipos said. "What we have found happen with the children is they will take the duck in and they will treat the duck first and it gives the child some control."

It also changes the relationship between the child and the doctors. "It breaks the ice and it gives them both something to focus on," Sipos said.

"It is a wonderful companion and a healing companion and a therapy companion for these young children," said Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr.

The ducks come with compact disc with interactive activities for the children who can register their new stuffed animals and create a coat of arms, said Russ Pritchard, the chairman of the board of ASCEND. The discs also contain cancer information for the family.

About 16,000 children a year are diagnosed with cancer and it's expected to take about $900,000 to take the program nationwide, Pritchard said.