Yippee Mackenzie is Cancer Free!

All May See Foundation was honored to join little Mackenzie Fredeen and her family at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital for her bell-ringing ceremony. We’ve followed Mackenzie on her cancer journey in our 2020 and 2021 Vision magazine stories.

We first met Mackenzie in 2020, when her parents, Jordanna Howard and Jeff Fredeen, invited family and friends to consider making charitable gifts to All May See Foundation for research aimed at retinoblastoma. A rare, early childhood eye cancer that develops in the retinal tissue, retinoblastoma can be curable if diagnosed early, as was Mackenzie’s case.  Mackenzie was diagnosed with retinoblastoma at just three-and-a-half-months old. To date, her family and friends have contributed over $13,000.

Fortunately, she found compassionate care at UCSF through specialist Armin Afshar, MD, MBA and his colleague, nurse Leanne Parsons, MS. Pediatric ophthalmology at UCSF strives to make small patients, courageously facing monumental challenges, feel like family while they are in treatment. “The combination of leading-edge expertise and humanitarian patient care for these child warriors is what Pediatric Pals makes Dr. Afshar’s team so successful. We are forever grateful,” according to Jordanna Howard, Mackenzie’s mother.

It was a wonderful event organized by Mackenzie’s care team. Friends, family and caregivers watched and cheered as Mackenzie came down the hall, filled with bubbles, to ring the hospital’s bell, signifying the end of her treatment.

Kenzie You Did It! read the handwritten card her family made and posted below the bell.  The inscription on the hospital’s bell reads:

Ring this bell
Three times well
Its toll to clearly say,
My treatments done
This course is run
And I am on my way!

We are thrilled for Mackenzie and her family as they can now start her new cancer free era!

Here’s a few photos from the event: