Mark your calendar for Saturday, Feb. 13, and Sunday, Feb. 14, and join us for the Great American Soccer Marrowthon!

As someone who sees children – from infants to young adults – with cancer and other blood disorders such as aplastic anemia and sickle cell anemia every day, I know just how important marrow donation is. Thousands of patients with leukemia and other life-threatening disease can be saved through transplants.

To help raise awareness, The Milwaukee Kickers Soccer Club will be hosting the second annual Great American Soccer Marrowthon this weekend. The event will feature 24 hours of continuous soccer to benefit Be The Match and the Milwaukee Kickers Soccer Club.

Here are the highlights for this weekend:

• Meet Kate Markgraf, co-captain of the USA Women’s Olympic Gold Medal Soccer Team. She’ll be signing autographs Saturday from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. She will have her medals in hand for you to see!
• Sign up to get in on the soccer fun.
• Sign up for the Be The Match donor registry.
• Donate blood on Saturday. Blood donations are important for children going through chemotherapy.

Join us this weekend!

-David Margolis, MD, program director, Blood and Marrow Transplant, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin

Learn more about Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin at chw.org.

Editor’s note: To celebrate the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver which begin Friday, Feb. 12, we’ll be publishing several sport-themed blogs throughout the 16-day run. Enjoy!

During the cold, snowy Wisconsin winter nights, I like to enjoy a cozy fire in our fireplace, sip hot cocoa and bundle up in a warm sweater. Sadly, winter also means a higher risk of home fires.

Did you know that over half of home fires happen late at night when people are sleeping? A nighttime house fire can be devastating, but knowing a few facts may protect your family if you wake up in the middle of the night and smell smoke.

Kids sleep more deeply than adults, and that may make it more difficult to wake them during an emergency. I recently read a study that said young children often sleep through normal smoke detector alarms or respond so slowly that they can’t escape within the critical three-minute time period. This makes it easier to understand why more than 50 percent of child deaths from fire occur when children are sleeping.

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Well, winter has officially arrived, and with it come heavy coats and snowsuits. While they are a necessity to keep our kids warm and dry, they are not for kids travelling in car seats.

The truth is, it’s not safe to put thick coats, snowsuits or blankets under the harness straps of a car seat because the straps need to stay snug on the child. Coats and heavy snowsuits actually compress in a crash, which can create a lot of extra slack. This could cause your child to be ejected from the car seat in a crash.

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