King of Prussia<\/a> Lego store, a former contestant on the reality TV competition series LEGO Masters, and Swoop, the Philadelphia Eagles mascot, to make the event quintessentially Sam. <\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s not about him,\u201d Goyal said. \u201cBut it is about him.\u201d <\/p>\n
As Goyal and the Make-A-Wish team prepared the logistics, Sam contended with a life-altering decision. Sickle cell can be treated through a bone marrow transplant. The ideal donor is a sibling who is a match. Will Okyere, Sam\u2019s 25-year-old brother, was. So Sam and his family scheduled a transplant for the end of August. The process starts with chemotherapy and ends with in-home isolation for several months, requiring Sam to miss most of his seventh-grade year with his friends. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a bummer,\u201d Sam said. \u201cBut, it\u2019s like, anything to get me better.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to get sickle cell over and done with,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
While sickle cell disease is not inherently fatal, it can increase the risk of life-threatening infections, acute chest syndrome, stroke, and chronic organ damage, particularly without medications or interventions such as a bone marrow transplant or gene therapy. <\/p>\n
Cynthia Norris, Sam\u2019s attending hematologist at Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia, who referred Sam for the wish, said he stood out among all her eligible patients because he has the most severe variation of the disease and has had a number of complications. His grace and thoughtfulness, she said, also set him apart. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s just a very special young man,\u201d Norris said. \u201cHe has so much empathy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Living out a perfect day<\/p>\n
After months of waiting and preparation, Sam\u2019s Perfect Day finally arrived. <\/p>\n
Shiny new yellow, red, and blue soccer balls and Hula-Hoops lined the main hall of the Families Forward office building. Tubs along the mirroring wall brimmed with sunscreen bottles, toothbrushes, and soap. A giant poster sandwiched in the middle bore Sam\u2019s likeness in Lego form \u2014 tiny Afro and all. <\/p>\n
Families Forward could never have afforded this bounty on its own, said Jessica Main, the nonprofit\u2019s chief development officer. Grant money the shelter receives is often tied to specific types of services like mental health and education. Its budget for toys and recreational materials is around $3,000 annually, Main estimated. That would probably barely cover the glimmering new basketball hoop and sports equipment Sam\u2019s donation drive brought in. <\/p>\n
Sam nestled into a blue canvas chair in the petting zoo as two goats nibbled food out of Dixie cups he held in each hand. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m naming this one Ashton,\u201d Sam announced to no one in particular, looking at a brown and white goat. <\/p>\n
\u201cFood! Anybody want food,\u201d he shouted to the tiny goats (one wearing a feathered bowler hat), bunnies, and one black pig that dragged its rotund paunch on the ground wherever it went.<\/p>\n
\u201cZane, Kai, Lloyd,\u201d he said, pointing at two goats and then the pig, naming all after characters on his favorite show Ninjago, which the uninitiated will be unsurprised to learn is a show about Legos. <\/p>\n
Soon a 3-year-old named Saga, wearing a white dress smattered with images of heart-shaped lollipops, entered the petting zoo enclosure, mouth agape as she stood eye-to-eye with the recently named Ashton the goat and gently patted the silver nubs on either side of its bony head. This was her first experience with farm animals. <\/p>\n
Her mother, Quechera Jowers, 32, followed closely. The pair have lived at the shelter for about four months. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to lie, it\u2019s a little nostalgic,\u201d Jowers said, taking in the carnival sights as they waited in line for cotton candy, which, based on crystallized red formations encrusted around Saga\u2019s mouth, it appeared she\u2019d already indulged in. <\/p>\n
Throughout the afternoon, gleaming toddler cheeks transformed into butterfly wings, kitten whiskers, and dragon scales with face paint. Pink and purple beads were strung into friendship bracelets, and technicolor swimsuits (each child got one through Sam\u2019s donation drive) grew soaked from a sprinkler raining down on the kids as they descended an inflatable slide adjoined to the bounce castle. Navigating the pipe system of the old converted asylum-turned-shelter facility was the challenge of the morning, Main said. <\/p>\n
Beyonc\u00e9 blared from a portable DJ booth, chubby fingers grasped balloons on strings and absentmindedly released them into the stratosphere, and a topless toddler with wild curls boogied near the mouth of a bubble machine, a diaper band peeking out from his khaki shorts. <\/p>\n
Sam, meanwhile, alternated between the Lego games, petting zoo, and basketball station. <\/p>\n
After discreetly lowering his game controller in the middle of a Lego joust, allowing a friend to overtake his spacecraft and win the game, Sam sauntered over to the goats situated in a kennel in the back of a truck to bid them farewell. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want them to leave,\u201d he mused as he delicately scratched a tan one on the chin and, with an understated graciousness rare to find in adults, let alone children, allowed the petting zoo staff to take them away. <\/p>\n
As the afternoon drew to a close, Sam settled into a chair in the hallway full of donations and futzed with a small Lego vehicle. An event organizer informed him that the Lego store employees offered to gift him all the leftover toys. Sam politely declined and requested they instead be given to the kids at the shelter. <\/p>\n
Asked in the final moments what could have made Sam\u2019s Perfect Day more perfect, he contemplated. <\/p>\n
\u201cNothing,\u201d he resolved. <\/p>\n
Nothing at all. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min On a mild April day, 12-year-old Sam Okyere reviewed his wish list with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[110822,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-261759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-make-a-wish-sam-okyere-sickle-cell-disease-philadelphia-homeless-shelter-help","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}