The Star News Weekender
11/24/06

For the love of Roxie
by Britt Aamodt
Special to the Star News

June 2003, 3.5-year-old Roxie Pasma complained of a stomachache. Her parents weren’t concerned. The Pasma family of Denver, Colo., had just returned from Minnesota where they’d been visiting family. Everyone was feeling a touch of “travel tummy.”

But the ache persisted, and a few days later father Tony Pasma discovered a lump in Roxie’s stomach. It was cancer.

Roxie’s aunt Barb Pasnik, Ramsey, remembers the phone call. Neuroblastoma, her brother called it, an aggressive solid tumor cancer that strikes on average 12,500 children every year and has a 30 percent survival rate in advanced cases.

Like a tree, the tumor had wrapped its roots deep around Roxie’s kidneys. Surgery could only do so much for the little girl. There would be six rounds of chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant and untold late-night hospital visits in Roxie’s future.

“My sister Sue and I felt so helpless out here in Minnesota,” recalled Pasnik. “We couldn’t be there in the hospital with them, but we wanted to help. So we decided to hold a craft fund-raising sale to help with the medical bills.”

Pasnik and her sister got the word out. They asked everyone they knew to donate something to the sale.

It was from this initial call for help that Curves of Elk River initiated its now annual holiday craft sale, a fund raiser for the American Cancer Society.

It started with Roxie, said Esther Ewert, manager of the women’s exercise club where Roxie’s aunt was a member.

Ewert’s idea was to make snowmen out of landscape brick. It snowballed into 385 holiday snowmen that were then sold for $10 each. Orders were taken and snowmen were sold at the Elk River Curves.

The fund-raising benefit took place November 2003, nearly five months after Roxie’s diagnosis, in Lakeville where Pasnik’s sister lived. The collection of handmade rugs, chairs, painted ornaments, afghans, crochet work, candy, cookies, gift jars and snowmen brought in dozens of holiday shoppers and well-wishers.

“Other people called and asked if they could donate to our sale,” recounted Pasnik. “People came from all over. They brought crafts to donate and then left with other crafts. One woman gave us a quilt for Roxie; she’d lost her granddaughter to cancer. Another woman handed Sue a check for $2,500. Selfless acts abounded.”

Pasnik was stopped in her tracks by a mother of two. The woman, now in her 30s, came up to Pasnik and introduced herself by saying she had been a victim of neuroblastoma and had survived.

The sale earned $14,000—money sorely needed to pay for Roxie’s medical bills. Later that week, Pasnik and her sister boarded a plane. They hand-delivered the check to their brother in Colorado.

In 2006, Roxie Pasma is a healthy 7-year-old, attending elementary school with twin sister, Mackenzie, and brother, Zach. Every summer, the children cheer their father along the 150-mile bike ride he undertakes for the Children’s Hospital Foundation.

Neuroblastoma has changed their lives, said Pasnik. They have become advocates in the fight against a cancer which accounts for 14 percent of all cancers in children younger than 5.

They have opened their lives to strangers—through an online web log tracking Roxie’s progress, through face-to-face meetings and grassroots fund raising.

“It still brings tears to my eyes when I think of everyone who helped at the craft sale,” said Pasnik. “It’s amazing how generous people are. People like Esther and the woman with the check. I think I cried for two days.”

The tradition of giving started by Pasnik continues at Ewert’s Elk River Curves. The members have formed a Relay for Life team and every November hold a holiday craft fair to benefit the American Cancer Society.

“Cancer has touched most of us,” said Ewert, explaining her organization’s fund-raising efforts. “Some of our members are survivors. And all of us know of someone who has had cancer. But we look at people like Roxie who’ve beaten the odds, and we see how fund raising has made a difference.”

This year’s Curves holiday craft sale will be open to the public 7:30 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 25. Besides crocheted ornaments, embroidery, towels and other handmade items, the Curves craft team has created a series of holiday snowmen made out of old-fashioned wooden spools. Hot apple cider will be served. Female guests will receive a free one-month pass to exercise at Curves.

Journalist

http://www.erstarnews.com/2006/November/24roxie.html 

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