Nora Bazin shuffles through a handful of cards with messages written by strangers she will never meet.
“What do you call an alligator wearing a vest?” she asks, reading one card.
“An investigator.”
Her mother smiles and laughs.
Nora, 7, has T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma, an aggressive cancer that started in the lymph nodes in her neck and moved into her chest.
On Monday, she was at the Canadian Blood Services (CBS) Edmonton location to get her latest transfusion.
The messages on the cards were written by blood donors as part of a partnership campaign organized by the CBS and the Stollery Children’s Hospital.
“It’s just amazing that people take time out of their day,” Nora’s mother, Emily Bazin, said of the messages. “It’s not a big thing. But still, it’s something that you have to go out of your way to do. And it makes such a big difference for families like ours.”
Diagnosed in November 2017, Nora has had numerous blood transfusions over the past 14 months. Lately, she has been given one every week.
“She particularly seems to be quite sensitive to the chemotherapy, and it tends to drop her blood counts fairly frequently,” Emily Bazin said.
Her daughter is expected to continue to receive regular transfusions for another year.
To help keep track of all the procedures she has gone through, Nora has a string of beads that spans across her arms and chest twice over.
As part of its Beaded Journey program, the Stollery Children’s Hospital gives the beads to children and teenagers with cancer to help them visualize what they’ve been through.
“Just to really see how much these kids go through on their journey to getting better is pretty amazing,” said Alison Naylor, a child-life specialist at the hospital.
Norah Bazin, 7, shows off the string of beads she has collected from the Stollery Children’s Hospital. (Travis McEwan/CBC)
Blood donors have until the end of the month to write messages to children or teenagers who will receive blood donations as they deal with cancer.