The McKinney family name is well known in Yakima, most often associated with fixing broken things. (windows)  But some things are too big to fix even for them.

Earlier this week we had Dave McKinney on the Morning News to talk about his niece Vivian Rose Weaver.  There is no easy way to put this. At the age of 3 and a half, his sister Katie's daughter, Vivian Rose, is dying. She has a rare and fatal form of brain cancer called DIPG.  Those terrifying initials stand for "diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma".  It is the deadliest form of pediatric brain cancer with a near 0 percent survival rate after a nine-month decline following diagnosis.

The family is devastated and balancing  the precious time remaining  with caring for Vivian and her little sister Lucie while mounting a fight for funding through their foundation for more research and medical progress against DIPG.

The Vivian Rose Weaver Defeat DIPG Foundation has raised $160,000 so far and recently received an anonymous donation of an additional $1 million! That generous gift raised the bar and the foundation is now hoping to bring the total raised to $2 million for 2018.  The family acknowledges that will be quite a challenge, but they say if kids like Vivian can fight every single day to beat this cancer, then the foundation and donors will fight just as hard to make sure there is the research to uncover effective treatments for kids like Vivian.

Research is slowly making progress but the funding is not a priority for this rare form of the disease and the foundation hopes the Yakima Valley will once again show its amazing generous nature and help fund the development of a cure for the little Vivians of the future.

Here's our conversation with Vivian's Uncle Dave.

Vivian's parents on the Lemonade Face Challenge!

 

 

 

 

 

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