Our Cause
For the past three and a half decades, the Crystal Ball community has come together with unwavering commitment and vision to transform health care for all kids in BC. This year, as we celebrate the 35th anniversary of Crystal Ball, we honour the long-standing legacy of this community as we continue our quest to conquer childhood cancers.
The moment a family first learns their child has cancer, they take their first step on a heart-wrenching journey—one where the outcome is uncertain. Of the 130 children in BC diagnosed with cancer each year, one in five of them won’t make it home free of cancer.
You are the key to unlocking new possibilities for these children.
With you by their side, experts at BC Children’s can change the course of every young life battling cancer through genetic screening and targeted, personalized therapies specifically built for their bodies and their cancerous tumours. You can open the door to new possibilities, and help shape the outcome for the one in five currently not making it—from heartache to hope.
Yet it doesn’t end there. After this exhaustive, terrifying and emotionally destructive journey, the path to healing does not simply finish once the cancer is gone.
Families need experts who understand what they have just survived together. Mending these unique emotional wounds requires long-term care through psychosocial and specialized programs.
This is the future of pediatric oncology care. With your help, this is how we can save the lives of the 20 per cent of kids with cancer that don’t survive.
Kamryn’s Cancer Diary
Kamryn Exley is a dancer. A daughter. A friend. And in 2017, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Today, Kamryn and her family are facing the reality of a relapse.
Over the coming months, we invite you to follow Kamryn’s story as her family faces the most challenging journey of their lives.
RBC is a proud sponsor of Crystal Ball’s patient champions—celebrating the courage of patients and families at BC Children’s Hospital, and helping to bring them new hope.
Kids like Kamryn face a one in five chance that, despite all of the recent advances in pediatric cancer treatment, their child will not survive. And even if they do, the side effects from their treatments can have devastating, long-term impacts.
What if this year, you could give hope to all kids with cancer—kids like Kamryn?
For a second time, cancer has taken away Kamryn’s passion—dance. Her hair. Her childhood. But Kamryn refuses to let cancer win.
She’s been here before. She knows what lies ahead. But what are the costs of the treatments she must undergo? The serious side effects of this life-saving treatment can have devastating effects.
Together with your help, we can change this unacceptable reality.
Imagine a fridge with more medication than food, a child’s soccer schedule being replaced with medical procedures, and a parent being trained on the fly to administer chemotherapy for their child, at home.
The path ahead is unknown but in the midst of daily challenges, Kamryn and her family still find many reasons to be thankful.
Hope, faith and fear are just a few of the emotions Kamryn and her family have navigated during her cancer treatments. But when COVID-19 hit, the complications only escalated.
In part 4 of Kamryn’s video diaries, we learn how the team at BC Children’s Hospital used their resourcefulness and unshakable determination to ensure Kamryn received the life-saving treatment she needed.
After her daughter, Kamryn, endured bone marrow transplant surgery, Carrie Exley waited for weeks for news on the outcome. On Mother’s Day 2020, she received the news she was hoping for—but her relief wouldn’t last long.
In her fifth diary entry, Kamryn navigates yet another life-threatening hurdle in her battle with cancer.
Changing The Conversation
How do you tell a family that their child won’t survive their cancer? These conversations are among the most difficult for our clinicians here at BC Children’s Hospital. It’s these moments that drive their passion to change this conversation with the families whose children are in a losing battle with their disease.
What if this year, you could change these moments from ones of heartbreak to hope?