Soggy Day Brightened with Waves of Orange

The 2010 American Heart Association Heart Walk was amazingly represented by Quinn’s Team. The walk held on the Columbia River water front was a sea of orange, with over 150 Quinn Driscoll Foundation representatives. Although the day was cold, windy and rainy, a mass of friends, family and community members adorned the walk in Quinn’s name.

Together, Quinn’s Team raised over $4300 and took home 3 awards for “Top Community Team Award”, “Strength in Numbers Award” and Kelly took home “Top Walker” for raising over $1000 herself. More importantly, we could not be more humbled by the outpouring of love and support of each and every one of you who participated, donated and spent your Saturday with us! People traveled from Seattle, Portland and other communities outside Vancouver to show their support of Quinn.

I do want to emphasize to all of you who proudly wear the Quinn Driscoll Foundation orange t-shirts the responsibility you have to promote heart health. Wearing a bright orange shirt will undoubtedly garner some attention. If asked about “Quinn”, please take a few moments to explain the importance of getting regular heart screenings, especially for those under 21. Tell them a simple EKG at their next check-up or sports physical can be the difference between life and death. Emphasize that sudden cardiac arrest affects over 3500 kids in this country annually. Many of which do not survive. As a member of Quinn’s Team, we will not allow this to impact another family!

For those of you who were unable to get a t-shirt (we ran out of certain sizes), we will be ordering more in the coming days and get a note out when they arrive. For those of you who wear L-3X, we have t-shirts available. For more information, please contact Scott Driscoll (scott@quinndriscollfoundation.org).

Stay tuned for more announcements, events and a celebration of Quinn’s life on June 10, 2010 at Wy’East Middle School (for more information go to http://tinyurl.com/23qenyj).

-Scott

Know your family health history, get routine heart screenings and understand the symptoms of heart disease…

A Parents Message

To be honest, I struggled with what to write for the opening blog post on Quinn’s foundation site. I struggled with what to write, how to write it and knowing the pain it would cause as I hammered out words on my keyboard. I came to realize that what I should blog about is less about the past, more about what we can do to prevent another tragedy and how we can rally as family, friends and community around Quinn’s legacy.

On that ominous day of June 10, 2009, both Kelly and I agreed we would not let Quinn’s tragic death occur in vain. What became visible very quickly was the fact that Quinn’s death could have been prevented. In the hours, days, weeks and months since we lost Quinn, we have learned a great deal about the prevalence, dangers, detection and prevention of heart disease which causes Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) in young people. We as a family and now through our foundation are dedicated to the greater community to educate, detect and prevent the loss of another son or daughter to SCA.

As parents, we are wired to protect our children, keeping them out of harm’s way, guarding them against danger, instinctually keeping them healthy and happy. We learned through a very catastrophic lesson that all of the precautions, check up’s, physicals and measures to protect Quinn was not enough. How could that be? Every visit to the doctor, every sports physical and his outward healthy constitution indicated he was in great physical shape. He never complained about anything; he was rarely sick, colds and flu always seemed to pass him by and there was no indication that his heart was 2 times larger than average. No symptoms, no indications, no nothing. Quinn’s one and only symptom surrounding his disease was Sudden Cardiac Arrest.

Throughout the Quinn Driscoll Foundation web site we have provided a great deal of information about taking a pro-active approach to the early detection of heart disease in our youth. Please take a moment to read through this valuable and potentially lifesaving information. I cannot stress enough about the importance of this information. Understanding you family’s health history, not accepting standardized sports physicals as being comprehensive and challenging your family physicians/pediatricians to conduct routine heart screening s are paramount to saving lives.

We are also working in partnership with the Heart & Vascular Services team at Southwest Washington Medical Center to provide access to screening and testing services for the detection of heart disease in our youth. As that relationship continues to advance, we will provide additional information about testing and screening events.

Finally, we have discovered a great need in our community to provide automated external defibrillators (AED’s) to organizations who serve our youth but have no resources to afford the purchase of an AED. We will work with those organizations in need to provide them with AED’s through a grant process.

I will close by extending a warm and heartfelt thank you to our amazing community. Your support and love have not only helped us get through this tragic event, it’s provided us with the motivation to take action and continue Quinn’s legacy.

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