Duke PTCT Family Support Program

Halloween fun on DCT 4A! 🧡

In ONE WEEK we’ll gather to celebrate our Heroes at the 24th Annual Rainbow of Heroes Walk! Our staff, volunteers, and vendors are SO excited and gearing up to see you at the Duke Center for Living on Saturday, September 28!

Some FAQ’s answered below:

-Do I need to register?
YES! Help us plan and get excited to welcome you with open arms! Register using this link in your browser bit.ly/rohwalk2024

-Is the event rain or shine?
Yep! We’ll be there - no matter the weather - and will make memories together.

-What’s the schedule of events?
See photo 2!

-Why should I come?
Whether a patient, staff member, friend, or community partner, YOU are an important member of our FSP family and we hope to see you there!

This magical day is a wonderful opportunity to stay connected to the mission of the Family Support Program as we care for, serve, and lighten the burdens together.

Plus: it’s TONS OF FUN!

Leave a comment below if you plan to attend!

🎉Hip, Hip Hooray! We're 2 weeks away!🎉
Have you registered? Get your walkin' shoes ready and join us Sat Sep 28 at the Duke Center for Living for our 24th Annual Rainbow of Heroes Walk!
Register by visiting this link: bit.ly/rohwalk2024

In simple terms, a rainbow is defined as a multicolored arc made by light striking water droplets. However, in order for the arc to form, atmospheric conditions must be perfect. The light must find its way to the droplets at just the right time and in just the right direction. They appear when two conditions occur at the same time: rain and sun.
Beyond the science of a rainbow, we know there is so much more meaning and wonder they hold.
Promise. Beauty. Perseverance. Hope. Honor. Joy. Awe.

Much like rainbows, we look at our Heroes in awe and wonder seeing beauty and perseverance through the hardest of times. They inspire us and bring hope into dark and sad places. Rain and sun coexist just as our Heroes spread joy in the midst of pain. To us, a rainbow is so much more than light striking water droplets. It’s our symbol and something that connects us all - near and far - to walk hand-in-hand in this journey we call transplant.

Today we celebrated Rainbow Day to close out Spirit Week. We wore our Rainbow of Heroes t-shirt to honor, celebrate, and remember all the Heroes that have gone before us. The kids, Our Kids, who are the beacon of light in the midst of the rain.

To our 2024 Heroes: we celebrate you today!

💥BAM! KAPOW! BOOM!💥Our Superheroes saved the day on 4A! Striking poses, naming superpowers, and Bingo fun are just some of the ways we celebrated Superhero Day for Spirit Week 2024. Thank you, for sponsoring this special day!

Spirit Week 2024 brought a roarin’ good time today on 4A! We celebrated animal day in style with headbands, animal crackers and creating pet rocks! Our caregivers loved some mid-day Starbucks treats. All the thanks to PNC Data Governance Team for sponsoring this Spirit and Starbucks Day on 4A!

Today we continued the fun as we sang, hula’d, and surfed our way through Hawaiian Day! Many thanks to Centurions Hope for sponsoring this day as we were transported to tropical paradise on 4A!

Spirit Week 2024 kicked off with Crazy Hat and Sock Day! We decorated crowns, made sock puppet friends and “tipped our hats” for our Heroes near and far. Special thanks to at Hillandale Golf Course for sponsoring this special Spirit Day!

The H.E.A.R.T.S. Club at Hillandale Golf Course hit a home run in August bringing Duke PTCT families together for an unforgettable night at the Durham Bulls baseball game. ⚾️ From the walking out onto the field to receive a game ball to watching the post-game fireworks from the dugout, the evening was filled with celebration and the joy of shared experiences, making it a grand slam in the hearts of everyone who attended. The club’s mission, “Hillandale Embracing A Really Tough Situation,” was reflected in every moment, offering a night of family fun and meaningful connection for families that were one to three years post-transplant. The smiles in these photos are a testament to the impact of this special event. 😃 Thank you HEARTS Club at Hillandale and Durham Bulls Baseball Club! ❤️

We’re excited to announce that registration for the 24th Annual Rainbow of Heroes Walk is live! 🌈🎉 We love seeing your names appear in our FSP inbox as you register for the event! 😃 Whether you’re walking in memory of a loved one, fundraising with a team, showing support for a friend, or simply celebrating the PTCT community, this event is a wonderful opportunity to come together and make a difference for our heroes.
We encourage everyone to register by creating a team, joining a team, or registering to attend the event as an individual. If you plan to create or join a team, you’ll automatically be prompted to fill out a registration form. Fundraising or donating is optional and not required when registering.
Click Here for More Info --> https://tinyurl.com/ROHWalk2024
Mark your calendars and start making plans to join us on September 28th for a day of celebration, remembrance, and love! ❤️
📷: Mr. Rainbow, Big Red from HEARTS Club at Hillandale, and at ROH22! 🌈

We are grateful for our generous donors and super fun nurses that helped our patients and families celebrate the 4th of July holiday on 4A with stars, stripes, and smiles! 🇺🇸😃

Thanks to Jeff and a local sewing group that is hosted at Jeff’s Sewing & Vacuum in Augusta, GA, we were able to treat everyone to Jeni’s ice cream and the nurses were gifted pint size handmade ice cream bowls! 🍨

Thanks to the H.E.A.R.T.S. Club at Hillandale Golf Course⛳️, we were able to purchase an assortment of festive decorations and confetti poppers! 🎉 We appreciate our incredible community of supporters that create joyful moments in the hospital during the holidays! ❤️

“It’s nice to finally have someone who understands.”

These words were shared in our first Connect & Care group which began early February 2024. There is much to be said about shared experiences and aligned understanding relating to others who are walking the same journey as you. For all our inpatient PTCT families, the magnitude of the transplant treatment process weighs heavily on each of our caregivers. Connect & Care began with the mission of holding space to navigate the highs and lows of the PTCT experience together. Inpatient caregivers are invited to attend each week for an opportunity to share about the journey, encourage one another, and build connections and relationship. PTCT Social Workers, Emma Law and Katie Boulware, along with FSP Associate Director, Mary-Claire Derrickson, collaborate to provide this protected time and space away from the unit for Connect & Care to take place. Caregivers feel freedom to ask questions of one another for a different perspective from the medical team. As one participant shared “no question is off the table while we’re here!” There are tears and laughter as the uniqueness of transplant is discussed.

Every Tuesday at 2 we gather in the waiting room between 4A/4B to “Connect & Care”. Just another way we’re fortunate to lighten the burden for our PTCT families!
As one of our caregivers shared today:
“I’ve been waiting for this all day!” We enjoyed building Lego treasures while we chatted, laughed, and shared stories.

For the past couple of months, we have witnessed the 4A community show love and care to one another by exchanging personalized mail. 💌

It has been endearing to watch patients and caregivers create paper mailboxes to place outside their hospital room door and see the thoughtful cards begin to fill them.

Our patients remind us that moments of meaningful connection and relationships with others are something we need no matter our age! We hope this inspires you to send some mail of your own to the special people in your life. ❤️

🎉 Today, we celebrate the incredible Dr. Paul Martin as he retires after 28 years of dedicated service to Duke University and the Duke Pediatric Transplant and Cellular Therapy (PTCT) Program! His unwavering commitment, compassion, and expertise have touched countless lives and made a lasting impact on our community.

We honor Dr. Martin’s extraordinary contributions to Duke PTCT and would love to hear from you if you have photos or messages to share with us for his memory book gift. You can share in the comments or email our team at [email protected].

Congratulations to a true hero in healthcare! ❤️🌈
6.28.24

From punch cups, puzzles, and painting to volcanoes, vehicles, and singing voices, we've had tons of fun in the Connection Room!

You never know what you will see when you’re out and about in the halls of 4A! Dancing, Steps to Recovery laps by foot or car, creative window art by nurses, parachutes, Star Wars characters, and more. The 4A force has been with us this spring season! 😊

Get your colorful pom poms out everyone! 🎉Today marks 4 months until our 24th Annual Rainbow of Heroes Walk being held at the Duke Center for Living in Durham, NC on Saturday, September 28th from 9am-1pm! 🌈

There will be more information shared in the months to come with event details and instructions on how to register to attend, create a team, and make donations. Until then, we hope you’ll save the date and start making plans to join us on September 28th for a day of celebration, remembrance, and love! ❤️

To learn more about the Rainbow of Heroes Walk, please visit our website at www.dukeptctfamilysupport.org/ROH.

📷: Photos shared are from our 2023 ROH Walk. 🌈

Happy St. Patrick’s Day from 4A! ☘️🌈
has an Irish cousin named Luigi Linguini Cannoli that has been up to all kinds of leprechaun mischief on 4A this month. Naps in lucky charms, green window painting, hanging upside down from a clock, joining the flight squad in his green paper airplane, making shamrocks to decorate the unit, and more! We’re going to miss having this fun lil leprechaun around. Go check out on Instagram to see all the adventures of our favorite 4A elf and leprechaun! 💚

✨Thankful Thursday ✨

There are many caring hearts and helping hands that make the work of the Family Support Program possible! Today, our Marcus Center for Cellular Cures (MC3) teammates helped us get ready for spring by stuffing eggs and making basket kits so patients can go on treasure egg hunts in their hospital room or in the hallways of 4A. Thank you MC3! 🤗🌸 We are also very thankful for our HEARTS Club at Hillandale friends for their generosity in sponsoring all of the egg hunting supplies! ❤️🌈

This is what happens when Leap Day falls on Bingo Thursday! 🐸
(📷: Photo of a patient’s “Bingo Blackout” card. We love the LOVE. 💜)

❤️ Valentine’s Day - A day we celebrate the community of LOVE surrounding us on 4A! ❤️

We have experienced the care and generosity of our community, colorful confetti parades, and celebrations all year long. The nurses are spreading joy as they wear festive holiday headbands and patients’ rooms are made bright with the glow from the twinkle of battery-operated lights. 🌟 You can hear funny bingo songs via walkie talkies on Tuesdays and play music with Tray on Thursdays. But there is so much not captured in our pictures. What you don’t see here is the stress of the unknown, the many tears shed, and the unthinkable heartbreak that comes with the loss of a child. There isn’t a picture or words that could ever sum up the sadness we feel when we lose a child.

To the moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, siblings, caregivers, and friends who are missing a piece of their heart this holiday season, we are holding you close. We want you to know that today and every day, we honor you. We speak your child’s name and we cherish the beautiful memories made. When we show up to work each day, we promise to share with others the joy they shared with us. We do arts and crafts, we have birthday parties, we share meals together, and we create community in honor of them. We carry their memory close to our heart and we don’t take a single day for granted. We well up with tears when we think of their smile and all the happy moments we shared with your family. We feel honored that you let us walk this journey with you, on the good days and the hard. Please know that they are not forgotten. Your family will always be a part of us and we are better for it. ❤️

To others it may seem like a messy floor.
To those of us on 4A it represents so much more. It’s relief and gratitude. It’s a milestone that has been reached. It’s opportunity for a future outside these walls.

Magical moments happen every day on 4A! But confetti adds extra sprinkles of hope for all who are still fighting.

This holiday season we’re thinking of all our fighters. We’re cheering you on and are so grateful for the opportunities to walk alongside you.
❤️🌈

Feeling festive on 4A!

Happy Holidays! ❤️☃️❄️🥳🎄

✨Thankful Thursday✨
Today we are gleaming and beaming with gratitude for those who have purchased a duck to donate to a pediatric patient this holiday season! For the 18th year in a row, we're a beneficiary of the Aflac Holiday Duck Campaign. ALL proceeds of our sales directly support the work of the PTCT Family Support Program!
Interested in purchasing a duck to donate to our patients?

Visit: bit.ly.com/2023ducks to place an order
OR *Link in bio*