HAIL TO PURPLE

Day 19 of 25 DAYS OF HUGGING:

“Northwestern” in all its royal purple forms became a special place for Christina after she got married.  It wasn’t easy when she got dragged to every home football and basketball game by her new husband (“how much do season tickets cost again???”), but when she got to start hosting tailgate parties, then it became a love and passion. 

It was another chance to throw a party and
hug more people.

Christina was also introduced to Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the incredible doctors and researchers at Northwestern after we got married.  While several doctors elsewhere told Christina she could not have children because of her fibroids, Dr. Lisa Mazzullo and her colleagues at the Northwestern Memorial Faculty Foundation saw to it through several surgical procedures that the fibroids would leave and that two amazing children would be brought into this world.  Every time we left the hospital after a surgery or the two C-sections,

Christina made sure to hug all the nurses and
doctors who made possible her life’s ambition,
being the mother of John and Donna.

Christina’s last encounter at Northwestern was the valiant effort to beat down leiomyosarcoma.  While it didn’t work as we hoped, she left there that last time to go home only after hugging and consoling the teary-eyed nurses and doctors whom she had so touched with words of encouragement.  As we said getting into the car that dreadful day, we had many more awesome departures from there than this last one, and those others such as with John and Donna coming home for the first time would be the ones we would remember.

Christina’s involvement with Northwestern
continues today. 

She has been recognized in several areas of the hospital campus for her giving during her lifetime and for what she meant to people that felt her hugs.  It can’t be scientifically proven, but John, Donna and I know she orchestrated our introduction to Dr. Vadim Backman last year, a passionate researcher and humanitarian who has also felt the pain of losing a loved one to the same extremely rare cancer that took our Christina.  He is doing amazing research in so many different areas, and one of his passions is to beat leiomyosarcoma, and all cancers, so that one day no one else will ever lose a wife, mother, daughter or sister to that dreaded disease again.  Please take a look at his video here and you’ll understand why it wasn’t hard to convince the Board to support his research, and we know Christina was there to in spirit to make sure we did just that.

For more about Northwestern Memorial hospital, see www.nm.org
For more about Feinberg School of Medicine, see www.feinberg.northwestern.edu
For more about Lurie Cancer Center, see www.cancer.northwestern.edu
For more about Northwestern University, see www.northwestern.edu

Please consider a donation to CCCF: www.celebratingchristina.org/donate

One day, one goal, one hug.

MARIA PIERORAZIO

Day 24 of 25 DAYS OF HUGGING:

Christina was the second of three daughters born to Benny & Maria Pierorazio. Maria was a doting mother and a role model in every sense to her daughter Christina.  Maria taught her daughter compassion and empathy, along with how to be a mother and how to run a family.  Any time Christina was faced with a problem, inevitably she would say:

“my mother would do this…”

Maria and Benny Pierorazio on their wedding day

Maria was THE driving force in Christina’s life.

While there were many lessons Christina learned from her mother, Maria’s final lesson for her daughter was to teach her how to handle illness and death with all the grace only a true angel could impart. 

For when Christina’s suffering became unbearable and when the doctors put her on hospice, Christina kept the picture of her mother on a table or the nightstand right in front of her where she could see her mother and feel her counsel.

Christina was driven to help rid this world of that awful breast cancer that took her mother some 28 years earlier.  She offered counsel and encouragement to others suffering from the disease and always advocated for screening.  She was a huge supporter of the Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Center at Northwestern Memorial, and received all her screenings there after a false scare years ago.  She took great pride in strides we were making against that awful killer, and quietly relished the number of other young women who would now have joy of their mothers with them because we are making such progress against this form of cancer.  

This sense of purpose against cancer is what motivates all of us involved with CCCF.

For more information on Lynn Sage and all the great work they do, please visit: https://lynnsagefoundation.org.

And of course, please consider a donation to CCCF: www.celebratingchristina.org/donate

One day, one goal, one hug.