Chemo Duck [home] The mission of Gabe's Chemo Duck program is to use education and empowerment
to support positive healing in lives touched by cancer and create a unified
voice to make understanding the causes of cancer a national priority.

The vision of Chemo Duck is to live in a world without cancer.


Chemo Duck Story

Gabe and his mommy, LuIn December 2002, Lu Sipos and her husband Rob found out their 1-year-old son, Gabe, had cancer. Gabe struggled to understand what was happening to him, as life quickly became a neverending round of doctor and hospital visits.

In an effort to help her child through the experience, Lu Sipos took a present left by a friend - a stuffed yellow duck, fairly generic, except for his oversized orange beak - and gave it an extreme makeover. She dressed it in blue hospital pajamas and tied a bandana around its head. She added a chemotherapy port on its chest and a blood pressure cuff and borrowed empty syringes from her son’s nurses and gave them to Gabe, who began playing doctor. They named the duck Connor the Chemo Duck, and the Sipos family decided to the take the idea one step further - making it available to other children struggling through cancer treatment. Gabe’s Chemo Duck program was born.

The Sipos, through their nonprofit organization, Gabe’s My Heart, based in Tennessee originally partnered with the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt to deliver this unique toy to each pediatric patient with cancer. Chemo Duck provided an innovative and unique approach to optimum communication and education for children who have cancer. In a gentle manner Chemo Duck exposes children with cancer to their new life and encourages healing through the power of play therapy.

In 2006, Gabe’s My Heart presented the rights of the Gabe’s Chemo Duck program to the ASCEND Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to make ending cancer a national priority.

Anne ScandaliosASCEND’s story starts with Anne Scandalios. Much like Gabe, Annie, as she was known to her friends, was an energetic and dynamic person until cancer entered her life. In 1998, just a few months after the birth of her first child, Annie noticed a lump on her breast. Unfortunately, Annie and her loving husband Nick heard those dreaded words - “it’s cancer” - and spent the next two years traveling to treatment facilities across the United States and even internationally in hopes of finding the best way to beat this dreadful disease.

During Nick and Annie’s research to try and understand this horrific disease, they learned that nearly 600,000 American lives are unjustly taken by cancer each year. Annie was outraged. How? How could we possibly have to live with this disease in this day and age? Something must be done. Little did Annie know that her realization would one day lead to something much greater.

Anne and her daughter, AnnaAfter two years of battling breast cancer, Annie died. Just one week before her death, Annie asked Nick to carry out her mission of educating people and empowering people to prevent and eradicate cancer once and for all. Shortly after Annie’s death, Nick started the Anne Scandalios Cancer Ends Now Directive (ASCEND) Foundation in February 2001.

As fate would have it, Gabe’s My Heart and ASCEND came together to touch more lives affected by cancer and to launch a duck with a message into the national spotlight. This soft, cuddly animal will help ASCEND spread the critical message to make ending cancer a national priority while being a companion to a child in need.

It is the goal of the ASCEND Foundation to utilize the Gabe’s Chemo Duck program to increase awareness about cancer to all those surrounding each child affected by cancer. ASCEND wants to empower parents and family members to raise their voice and let our country’s leadership know the time has come to eradicate cancer. We should no longer have to watch our children suffer from this horrific illness, nor should we accept the fact that more than half a million Americans die every year from cancer.

Drew and Chemo DuckThrough private and public support, the ASCEND Foundation will be able to set up a Gabe’s Chemo Duck program at every pediatric oncology center across the country and provide every child suffering from cancer with a Chemo Duck.

Chemo Duck will become the mascot for a powerful grassroots program – the duck with a big heart and a bigger message – it’s time we joined together and spoke up to find a cure!