Fashion show to help hospital make life easier for children with cancer

Every week, Rose Jensen and her 12-year-old daughter, Amanda, must make the long commute from the Northwest suburbs to Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago for Amanda's chemotherapy treatment.

The seventh-grader was diagnosed in February with pre-B acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and for the last eight months she has commuted into the city to receive her infusion treatments, that can last from six to eight hours at a time.

It takes up an entire day, causing Amanda to miss school, and Rose Jensen to leave work as a nurse at Northwest Community Hospital's clinic at the Police Neighborhood Resource Center in Rolling Meadows.

"With Chicago's traffic, it can take up to two hours to get there," says Jensen, of Hoffman Estates. "And that just adds to the anxiety of it all, knowing where you're going."

Still, change looks to be coming.

Proceeds from Northwest Community Hospital's fashion show, taking place Oct. 17 at the Meadows Club in Rolling Meadows, will benefit expansion of services for children with cancer. Officials hope to raise $100,000 from the event.

Specifically, they hope to fund new outpatient infusion services ­- including chemotherapy treatments - to be offered on the hospital's main campus in Arlington Heights, in a friendly setting designed for children.

The new services are the result of an expansion of the hospital's 17-year partnership with Children's Memorial Hospital, in which its specialists serve patients on site, at their clinic in the Busse Center of the Arlington Heights medical facility.

Just last month, hospital officials announced Children's Memorial physicians would begin staffing the pediatric emergency department at Northwest Community, from noon to midnight, seven days a week.

Now comes news of its expanded cancer services for children and their families.

The Jensens say, the expansion cannot come soon enough. Within a month, Amanda is expected to complete her intense chemotherapy, when she expects to go on maintenance treatments.

"When it's at Northwest Community, I could bring Amanda in after school," Jensen says. "It's only a 15-minute drive. As a parent, and as a nurse, I know it would lessen the stress."

Tickets for the fashion show are $75 and can be purchased by calling (847) 618-4260.