Boxer visit

Rep. Barbara Lee and Sen. Barbara Boxer recently toured Children's Hospital.

Senator Barbara Boxer Honors Children's Hospital

Sentator Boxer presents her award to Children's.

Sen. Barbara Boxer presents a Health Care Champions Award to Children's Hospital & Research Center Oakland. Standing with her are (l to r) Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California), Mary Dean, senior vice president, external relations, and Frank Tiedemann, Children's president and CEO.

Sen. Barbara Boxer made her first-ever visit to Children’s Hospital on Saturday, August 5 2006. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-California, of the 9th congressional district, which includes Oakland, accompanied her.

Sen. Boxer presented a Health Care Champion’s Award to Frank Tiedemann, Children’s president and CEO, for Children’s innovative work in pediatric care and research. Before she presented the award, she toured the hospital’s fifth floor playroom, meeting with kids, families and staff and seeing first-hand how a pediatric hospital is different from an all-ages hospital.

The senator then visited the Teen Lounge where she and Rep. Lee met with Adriana Aboumrad, 13, a leukemia survivor cured at Children’ s Hospital with major help from the Hematology/ Oncology, and Blood and Marrow Transplant departments.

Adriana received a bone marrow transplant from her sister Reena, a perfect genetic match. Eighteen months after the transplant, her case of acute proyelocytic leukemia returned. Chemotherapy was used to fight off a relapse and Adriana got a second transplant, this time from her older brother, Anthony.

When the family’s insurance company balked at paying for the needed procedures, Children’s stepped in to pick up the slack.

Today, a couple of years later, Adriana’s doing fine.

Sen. Boxer gets a healthy laugh from Adriana.

During the meeting, Adriana and her mother Leanne chatted with Sen. Boxer and Rep. Lee about their experiences with Children’s Hospital and about all she went through to get cured. Bertram Lubin, MD, senior vice president, research and president of Children’s research institute, was on hand to answer Sen. Boxer’s questions about Adriana’s medical procedures and about the importance of the Sibling Donor Cord Blood program at Children’s.

A crowd of about 75 Children’s Hospital staffers then heard both Rep. Lee and Sen. Boxer praise Children’s in the atrium. The senator also acknowledged that she and her husband had sold their Marin County home and were now official residents of Oakland.