The goal of Rebecca’s Wish is to provide hope to children with pancreatitis, a disease that is often misdiagnosed and misunderstood. San Antonio, Texas – and eventually other cities across the nation- will become havens for children worldwide with pancreatic disease where they can finally receive treatment they so desperately need. Inpatient and outpatient care, as well as supportive services and research and development are all foundational tenets of this life-saving charity. We ask you to join us in honoring the wish of a child by changing lives of countless others, so they can live a life free of suffering.
Our Story:
Once upon a time, a happy and healthy little girl named Rebecca was living her childhood dream with her mother, Christyn, her father Brian, and her two adoring brothers, Nicholas and Alexander.
Her dream came to a crashing and life-altering halt on Memorial Day weekend of 2010, when seven-year-old Rebecca was hospitalized for the first days of what would become well over 1,000 days of hospitalization. She had an unknown form of chronic pancreatitis caused from an unknown immunologic condition that precipitated a frantic nationwide search for an unknown cure.
The next few years were agonizing for Rebecca, as she suffered from this excruciatingly painful disease which quickly ravaged her body and put her life at risk. Rebecca’s family’s eventually uprooted to Minnesota so that she could receive a life-saving experimental transplant and the removal of five of her organs. She became the first child her age in the state of Texas to survive such a radical procedure.
Despite unwavering pain and her undesired circumstances, Rebecca has learned to live each day, hospital or not, to the absolute fullest. And living “full” for Rebecca means focusing on the joy of helping others, in particular, sick children like herself.
When approached by Make-a-Wish as to what her wish request would be, Rebecca’s answer was not at all surprising to those who knew her. “I want to meet with a medical philanthropist, who can help me start a charity to help kids like me so they don’t have to suffer like I did,” Rebecca said.