Seven-month-old Adriana Rangel doesn’t know it yet but while she recovers from a bone marrow transplant, a new soft stuffed white teddy bear is at home just waiting to be hugged.
More meaningful for her parents, Ann and Jose Edgar Rangel of Itasca, is the $1,000 check that was nestled in the bear’s protective paws during a presentation made by student council members last week at Lake Park High School.
The 80-member student council held a bake sale last month at the school’s winter play to raise funds for Adriana, who was diagnosed with congenital aplastic anemia when she was 3 months old.
Each was responsible for bringing at least two plates of baked goods for the sale, which raised $650. The remainder was donated from the council’s reserve funds.
“I was flabbergasted when I was told, and I’m astonished that kids would want to do something like that.” said Ann Rangel, Adriana’s mother, from the room the two share at the Ronald McDonald House in Wauwatosa, Wis.
Her daughter stared wide-eyed in a lacy pink dress at the photographs passed around at the presentation. Ann’s sister, Tracy, along with Tracy’s 3-year-old daughter, Krystina, accepted the council’s check.
“We thought it was something that was a worthy cause,” said sophomore Katie Dux, who co-chairs the council’s community committee with sophomore Adam Beagley. They pitched the bake sale idea to the council after reading about Adriana in a local newspaper.
Along with the $1,000 check, a $187 donation was added by freshman Liz Cuppola from her Girl Scout fundraising proceeds.
The transplant was conducted last month at the Midwest Children’s Cancer Center in Milwaukee. Adriana is being cared for through the Children’s Hospital of Milwaukee.
Adriana’s body is mildly rejecting her transplant, and steroids have been added to her medicine regime to suppress the rejection. If her blood count and platelets continue to rise to healthy levels and the rejection diminishes, she, her mother should be home by late February.
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