Sydni McConnell knows a lot about the spirit of giving. It was an unrelated anonymous donor who saved her life two years ago when she needed bone marrow transplant as part of her leukemia treatment at The Nebraska Medical Center. Now Sydni is also giving back to people who are going through what she survived.
What makes the story even more memorable is the fact that Sydni is just four years old.
One of her neighbors in Clearwater, Neb heard about Scentsy teddy bears and asked Sydni’s mother Heidi if she’d be interested in getting involved. The stuffed animals help raise money for the Ronald McDonald House.
Sydni jumped at the chance.
"It’s just a small town with a lot of love,” Heidi McConnell said of her home town. “If there’s anybody hurting, they really like to help they were willing to help Sydni give back after everything this place has given her."
The town of 400 donated 36 bears.
The McConnells arrived at The Nebraska Medical Center Wednesday morning for a blood test and check up. In between the two appointments, Sydni and her mother went room to room in pediatrics handing out Scentsy bears to kids of all ages.
“She thinks she came to the hospital today to hand out bears out to sick kids to make them feel better,” McConnell said.
The first Scentsy bear went to Colton Hagemann a six year old boy fighting leukemia.
“It means so much,” said Patricia Hagemann, Colton’s mother. “And knowing it came from another child who is a survivor of what he has, it’s very, very meaningful. He looked at me and said, ‘Mommy, when can we do this? When can we bring up something for the kids?’”
Sydni may not know what an inspiration she is to the young patients and their parents, but her mother says Sydni knows what she’s been through and plans to keep on giving. "She's two years out from treatment and doing spectacular."
The Nebraska Medical Center has an international reputation as one of the leading leukemia treatment centers offering, blood and marrow transplant as an option for leukemia treatment.
With a reputation for excellence, innovation and extraordinary patient care, The Nebraska Medical Center has earned J.D. Power and Associates’ Hospital of Distinction award for inpatient services for six consecutive years. It also received the 2011 Consumer Choice Award, a mark of patient satisfaction as selected by healthcare consumers and has achieved Magnet recognition status for nursing excellence, Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals Performance Improvement Leader recognition, as well as the Award of Progress from the state of Nebraska’s Edgerton Quality Awards Program. As the teaching hospital for the University of Nebraska Medical Center, this 624 licensed bed academic medical center has an international reputation for providing solid organ and bone marrow transplantation services and is well known nationally and regionally for its oncology, neurology and cardiology programs. The Nebraska Medical Center can be found online at www.nebraskamed.com