Let the Travel Begin

Let the Travel Begin

For the third time this year, we have headed out on a month long journey to share CareAline with the world (well, at least the United States). It seems like we have spent more time on the road than at home at this point, but we have gotten to see so much of the country, that it’s definitely worth it.

This trip is different than all the rest we have been on – this time we are taking America by camper! Yup, we have tried to do it twice before, and both times were unsuccessful. But this time, we did it. We got a little hybrid camper that we are towing behind our 4Runner. We bought it from a lovely family, and the cost of the camper is equal to what we would have spent just on hotels for this 5 week trip. So it will pay for itself by the time we get home, and we will be heading out again in January so it can start make up for lost expenses then.

When I think of how much money we have spent on travel over the past 3 years, I am so overwhelmed. At this point, travel is our biggest business expense. And when you are looking at bank accounts with tiny balances, and piles of personal bills that haven’t been paid, you come to the very quick determination that something has to give, or the walls are coming down. I only wish we had done this sooner. It could have saved us so much more.

Day 1

As with all camping trips, the set out day didn’t go off quite as planned. With a goal of heading out at 9am, we didn’t end up getting on the road until 1pm. Luckily we weren’t in a huge rush, and gave ourselves plenty of days to get down to Dallas, TX for the AVA 2016 Conference. One thing that was packed for the drive were the 1000 Dallas Mavericks logo emblazoned CareAline Sleeves and Wraps to be delivered to the Mav’s marketing team. (1000 pieces takes up a lot of space!)

We drove until a little after “bedtime,” and spent the first night at a Flying J truck stop. Quite a learning experience – 1) trucks are loud, 2) truckers start their day at 4:30am, 3) when you have to pee in the middle of the night and your two year old is sleeping on the floor in front of the bathroom, you use his potty instead of waking him up.

Day 2

A long driving day, we set out at about 8am. Two year olds only withstand being in the car for so long, so it was a bit of a rough day for Lochlan. Nothing too amazing happens when you are trying to get from point a to point b, so not much to say about day two. We stopped at a truck stop overnight just into Tennessee.

Day 3

After crazy toddler day two, we decided to keep day three short. We found a KOA between Nashville and Memphis and stopped at about 3pm. Lochlan loved the little playgound there, and Fallon (oh yah – the dog came too) appreciated the dog run. It was nice to be out of the car for longer than just sleeping, and to be able to walk around, and plug things into the camper (and run the AC!) overnight. I love KOAs because they are family owned (the owners even froze my big cooler water bottles overnight for me J ). And at $34 a night, they for sure are budget friendly!

Day 4

We didn’t rush out super early (which we probably should have lit a little fire under us). We left at about 10 and wanted to get as close to Texarkana as we could. Well, what should have taken about 8 -9 hours of us driving (we add an hour to google’s drive time for every 3 hours they say), ended up taking about 12. For some reason it just took forever to get there. It seemed like every time we made headway, we had to stop, or there was construction, or traffic. It was never ending. Tensions were high. During the drive we had called the campground that was right next to the convention center (totally should have done this ages ago…but such is life), and found out they have been flooded out all season and weren’t open. Then it was a scramble to find somewhere that had a spot to take us for five nights. We did finally find a place, but it was nerve wracking. Stopped at a truck stop for the night. No place to plug in, so no AC. It was hot! Not much sleep happened that night.

Day 5

Luckily we didn’t have far to go from just outside Texarkana to Dallas. We pulled into the RV “resort” (read cram them as tight as you can place) at about 10 am. We were able to get pretty set up and then headed out to our meeting with the Mavericks downtown.

The camping adventure has begun.

 

CareAline Products partners with One Mission to provide much needed Central Line and PICC Line care

CareAline is happy to announce an amazing partnership with One Mission; Buzz off for Kids Cancer. They have donated some much needed CareAline Central Line Wraps & PICC Line Sleeves to patients at Boston Children’s Hospital Oncology. Since Mark Cuban purchased 1000 CareAline products for the Dallas area pediatric hospitals (read more here http://www.xconomy.com/texas/2015/03/23/pediatric-pitch-day-highlights-kids-health-innovation-at-sxsw), we have been contacted by a few other organizations wishing to help. We feel that this partnership is a great bond of three entities that want to help people and make lives easier. This is an important element, and the program will thrive because of it.

The process is easy. 

For patients at Boston Children’s, there are vouchers available in the One Mission Resource room on 6N. Just go in and ask for a CareAline voucher for a Free product given by One Mission.

After you get your coupon, Visit carealine.com/sizing to find your size, pick your favorite color and place your order.

Upon checkout/Order Confirmation you will see a spot to enter the Coupon Code, enter it and click “Apply”

The code on the coupon you will receive is good for 1 product and free shipping.

This is proving to be a great program to get our products immediately into the hands of the kids who need them. Patient care and satisfaction is a hot topic right now in the medial world and we are right in the middle of it. Our goal is to not only improve the quality of care for all patients with lines, but to help improve the way the medial system incorporates products and services that can provide care “now”, not in 10 years. I am going to start blogging about our process and how even after awards are won, keynotes are finished, executives shaking our hands we still hit roadblocks. It should prove to provide some great information and data and a fun ride. We are looking forward to share how we have grown and become the #1 choice for PICC Line Care and Central Line Care in Hospitals and at home.

For more information or if your organization wants to sponsor CareAline products and provide CareAline® Sleeves and Wraps to patients for pediatric or adult facilities in your area, please contact Kezia today

Email:  Kezia@CareAline.com 

Phone:  617-548-7419

Cheers

The simplest post is sometimes the most powerful post

CareAline gets a lot of great testimonials and we appreciate every one of them. A couple of weeks ago when we were in the thick of Impact Pediatric Health at SXSW, we received a review that really hit the nail on the head in the area of our mission: “Provide improved quality of life and help ease disruption for patients with implanted intravenous lines, their caregivers, and the medical professionals who take care of them. CareAline® develops functional, protective products that give patients and their families peace of mind during extended intravenous treatments. If you have any question about how to safely take care of a PICC Line and as yourself: How do I take care of a central line? check out this amazing and to the point review:The testimonial came in the form of her blog..She has an amazing blog and a great story, personality and is such an inspiration –  Sometimes the simplest post is the most powerful post: Please check out her blog and share

http://www.inflamed-and-untamed.com/post/113253885198/my-favorite-picc-line-covers

If you need to safely secure your PICC line or Central Line, such as a Broviac or Hickman check out the #1 choice of Hospital executives from the top four children’s hospitals in the USA.

CareAline: A mother’s road to SXSW and how she is impacting pediatric health

Kezia sums it up in a guest blog post she did for VectorBlog.org , a Boston Children’s Hospital blog. The past week has been stressful for her – she needed a way to process our wins at Impact Pediatric Health and on top of that managing her health. She needs sleep and I will get that arranged. She needs a couple of days off to reboot. Anyone have a condo in the mountains they want to donate for a weekend?  Sometimes I am not a good person to process with.. I had been so focused on making sure we are prepared for growth, meetings, follow up, number crunching to show just how much of an impact we can have.  Ug… Its a lot, however this is what we signed up for and we shall deliver. We are excited for our project with the Dallas Mavericks; Its a good feeling watching our products get the recognition, and its rewarding watching Kezia become a known advocate and leader in pediatric innovation arena. The bottom line is, we are helping more kids and adults with CVC’s and PICC Lines. PICC Line care is a major concern for caregivers and patients. Central Line protection and infection control is a big deal and we have walked in the shoes of a parent taking care of our chid’s PICC Line and Broviac. For me, my experience during this event and after has been good. Its what we asked for, this is what we have been working for for the last couple of years. I just really enjoy watching Kezia lead the way on shaking up pediatric health.  Kezia is a wonderful writer .. follow the link to Vector – Please share on your Facebook & Twitter.. thank you

vectorblog.org/2015/03/carealine-a-mothers-road-to-sxsw

The long trip is over, the long road begins

I had a difficult time blogging and even Tweeting while driving home. It was a very long three days. In retrospect, we needed to take four days to return. It was just to much on Kezia and Lochlan. The trip home was pretty uneventful. My stress came from not being able to immediately start a social media campaign promoting our win at Impact Pediatric Health and our Indigogo Campaign to help fund our next steps.  I was able to do some Re-Tweets while at a gas station and quick potty breaks. Pretty much all kezia and I talked about was the win, Mark Cuban, the Dallas Maverick’s and our next steps. She is on cloud 9..

CareAline founder with Mark Cuban as he presents The Mark Cuban award to her at this years Impact Pediatric Health – CareAline won swept the awards buy taking all three 1st place spots.. 

Since the event win, she has done 4 interviews with media sources and has another scheduled with a blog in the UK for tomorrow. I will also send the info to CNN, The Today Show and Good Morning America. Maybe one of them will want to have Kezia on. She has been asked to speak as a keynote at a couple of large innovation events (will make official announcement soon) and she is very excited about this. The biggest excitement is that Mark Cuban is buying 1000 pieces and wants to put his Maverick’s Logo on them for the Children’s Hospitals in Dallas, TX. This can open it up to other teams – it would really make it fun for patients.

The reality is; just because we won, does not mean hospitals are going to all come knocking – a couple have – we need to do our follow up, strategize on our next steps such as an accelerator program; office space; interns; travel to the hospitals to meet with executives and medical staff to officially present our products, give demos and discuss contracts; social media campaign to promote company; etc…. much to do. The bottom line is, we need to ride the media wave of this win as long as we can.. (see Indigogo campaign; even though it has ended, we met our goal which means you can still donate to it – We have step goals set up; lets see how much money a small medical start up that has proven to help kids and adults can raise. We need to be able to get to the meetings and medial conferences – igg.me/at/CareAlineRoadTrip )

I have set this post’s “featured Image”. This is a picture of Saoirse looking at the trophies we just won at Impact Pediatric Health at SXSW2015. Saoirse was the reason our products were developed. When she wore the wrap and the sleeve, they were not products, they were a necessity. I promise that she is thrilled that something that was innovated for her is now helping patients worldwide.

Please share our blog. We have posted the pitch that Kezia did to win the event with Mark Cuban on our YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/user/CareAlineProducts/feed

Austin – nothing will stop us.. not even puke

The high from our win at Impact Pediatric Health is amazing. Kezia really owned the entire room when she started her pitch. I am so proud of her – I would have been proud of her either way.. she is such an amazing person and she deserves every bit of the spotlight. When she created the sleeve and wrap for Saoirse.. she was being a mom.. she was taking care of her child who was very sick. Kezia forgot that she herself was sick with her own cancer. Thats how other people centered she is. After the event, we were the very last people out of the Salon “J” at the Hilton Downtown in Austin. We turned and looked at each other and just took a deep breath.. We both started to feel the decompression. We had been there since 7:30 am and with all of the pump from the pitch contest, we were tired and the decompression was relaxing and a major stress release. This is important. I had really been worrying about Kezia because the less stress for her the better. She has cancer and stress is bad for that. So we do a lot of relaxation exercises and help. We went and found a food truck and ate something.. I was scrambling to call my team, parents and a few advisors. I also wanted to make sure our social media was covered – I kept telling myself “this next 48 hours is a free opportunity for advertising and marketing”.. I had to take advantage of this. Kezia was on cloud 9… she was so excited and was still in disbelieve I think. we knew we could not process what had happened at that time. So we ate. Then we went back to our friends house where we were staying. It was nice that they live 3 minutes from the train station.. we were about 15 miles away from the Hilton.. the train let off right next to it.. it was great to not need to worry about driving in and risk getting stuck in traffic. I want to get back to my daily blogging now that the event is over and will continue to blog every evening about our day’s traveling home – the next chapter in our adventure. Below is a post I started the day we arrived in Austin.. its really about the trip we had from New Orleans to Austin and an unexpected stop.

Our trip to Austin has definitely been interesting, yet frustrating and scary. We left Madisonville, LA on Thursday morning around 9am. Even though it was raining, things were great. Kezia was working on the pitch, I was navigating the rain and busy Interstate 10 – mostly semi trucks. I know truck drivers are on deadlines – but slow down and don’t risk killing anyone. Anyway, I get off topic. Kezia had woken up that morning with a lot of stomach pain, and just really a messed up stomach. Lochlan had been off too. I felt fine. We loaded the car, loaded Lochlan and we were off to our next adventure to Austin. Not so fast.

About 2 hours into the trip, I started feeling achy and my stomach was acting “funny”. I told Kezia that I didn’t feel well. We stopped and got some food for Lochlan and Kezia – I had no appetite, at all. As a matter of fact, the food smell made me feel sick. I was progressively getting worse. Achy, bad stomach and like I wanted to vomit. I couldn’t drive anymore. I pulled over after Kezia ate and she drove. Once we got back on the interstate after switching drivers I yelled for kezia to pull over. I felt it come up. There was no stopping it. I had the door open and head out the door puking before kezia could stop. The highway was busy.

We are off to Austin.. keep fingers crossed

We spent a couple of days with family in NOLA.. My mom hasn’t been well, however she looks great and seems to be getting better. Congestive heart failure, kidney and liver failure all take their toll on a person. She is strong, motivated and has lived for over 10 years with the heart failure. She and my dad inspire us to keep going and stay strong.. and tell us that under any circumstance, do not let anyone stop us and never take “NO” for an answer.

Kezia still has back pain. I fear its from her own cancer. Of course, I tend to worry to much. Lochlan still isn’t feeling well. His appetite has been low, upset stomach and just a bit clingy. As a parent of a child who died of cancer, Neuroblastoma, you always worry about your other children; I wonder, does he have early stages and we don’t know it? No, its such a low probability – like almost 0% chance. But its still a fear and most other parents in our support circle and beyond have the same fears. The reality is, the travel and not having his regular diet takes a tole. Plus, we feel the largest factor to him not feeling well is he is cutting a tooth.

In about half an hour we are setting off for Austin. Its about 8 hours.. 10 with Lochlan. This is ok because we want to make sure he gets some exercise and a chance to get out and run around a bit during the trip.

We have a lot of work to do while driving. We are still preparing for this pitch coming up Monday. We are nervous, however not that much. The bottom line is, its our pitch, our company, our product and design – we know it and we got this!

Kezia has done a great job writing the pitch and working with our coaches to refine it to be the most impactful. We will write more tonight or later today..