News

Izzy Strong: Benefit planned for Charlestown girl fighting cancer

By Olivia Belanger
THE KEENE SENTINEL
CHARLESTOWN — In mid-January, Izzy Vigneau came home from Charlestown Primary School with bruising on her collarbone.

The 10 year-old didn’t fall or get hit, she told her mother, and the marks didn’t hurt to the touch.

“It just wasn’t sitting right with me … ,” her mom, Tiffany Putnam-Vigneau, told The Sentinel recently. “I said ‘I’m gonna take a picture and send it to your doctor.’ “

By the next morning, the fourth grader’s bruising had spread from head to toe, so her pediatrician got her in right away for testing.

A few days later, Putnam-Vigneau got the news no parent wants to hear: Her daughter has leukemia.

“If you have been through it, you know. You know it all. And if you have not been through it, you don’t know,” she said. “You try to understand … but unless you live it, you just don’t know.”

Now, a group of family friends is working to help ease the burden on Izzy’s family, hosting a benefit in Keene this weekend to raise money for her medical expenses.

Izzy started treatment Jan. 17, the same day she was diagnosed. She stayed at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Memorial Hospital in Lebanon for her first block of treatment, known as induction chemotherapy, which lasts about 30 days.

The treatment is intense, Putnam-Vigneau said, and hit Izzy hard.

“She lost quite a bit of weight. She needed the extra care, the extra monitoring,” she said.

Once the month was over, the doctors told them the treatment wasn’t working as well as it should. Additional testing showed that her leukemic genes make reoccurrence of the disease a “very large possibility,” her mom said, because they are fighting the chemotherapy.

Her doctors still started her next phase, but Izzy had an allergic reaction to it, sending her into anaphylaxis. Because of this, Putnam-Vigneau said they shifted her to a different kind of chemotherapy, which requires six doses for every one dose of the original type.

Izzy hasn’t had any adverse reactions to this drug, her mom added, but it causes a lot of burning while administering it compared to the other chemotherapy. This requires Izzy is be put under anesthesia every time she’s given it.

“We started that Friday of last week, and we’re crossing our fingers … ,” Putnam-Vigneau said Wednesday. “This little block [of treatment] has really put her through the ringer.”

That treatment ends Monday and then she’ll have another bone marrow biopsy. If all goes well, she’ll continue treatment, which in total lasts about two years. If not, it’s back to the drawing board to figure out her next steps.

To help the family through these times, Chesterfield residents and family friends Anjalee Dreher and Thomas Call are hosting a fundraiser at the end of the month.

The event is slated for April 30 at 5 p.m. at Samson Manufacturing on Optical Avenue in Keene.

The outdoor fundraiser will include screening of Izzy’s favorite movies (“Hocus Pocus” and the 2019 version of “Jumanji”) on an outdoor, inflatable screen, yard games, face painting, music, a silent auction and catered food from CC&D’s Kitchen Market in Keene.

Staff from Dreher’s business — Heaven Hair Gallery Salon in Keene — will also be applying orange hair extensions (the color for leukemia awareness) to anyone who wants them.

People are asked to donate $20 per person to see the movies, Dreher said. That money, along with any other money raised through the silent auction or other donations, will be given to the Vigneaus.

“Anjalee is an amazing, amazing woman,” Putnam-Vigneau said. “We can’t thank her enough. I’ve had to take a leave of absence from work … so the fact that community members like Anjalee and her salon are so wiling to drop everything and step up for us has been amazing.”

Dreher said she couldn’t just sit back and not help.

“Izzy really needs her spirits boosted,” she said, “to see how many people support her and love her.”

Funding for the Monadnock Region Health Reporting Lab comes from several sources, including The Sentinel and several local businesses and private donors. We continue to seek additional support. The newsroom maintains full editorial control over all content produced by the lab.

This article is being shared by a partner in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.

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