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Tuesday, May 3, 2011

The five-year-old boy who sold 3,000 monster drawings

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

Fighter: Aidan Reed, five, from Kansas, U.S., has sold nearly 3,000 of his monster drawings and has managed to fund the treatment for his leukaemia


A little boy fighting cancer is selling pictures he has drawn of his favourite monsters to pay for the treatment that could save his life.

Aidan Reed, five, from Kansas City, U.S., was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia on September 13 last year.

Since then he has undergone weeks of treatment as well as chemotherapy, infections, spinal taps and other painful procedures.


Brave: Aidan was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in September last year and has undergone gruelling treatment including chemotherapy and spinal taps


Parents Katie and Wiley were devastated by the diagnosis, but were given hope when experts said the type of cancer Aidan suffers from has a 90 per cent cure rate.

But the family faced a mountain of hospital bills and had to put their home on the market to fund treatment.

Amazingly, that sale is now on hold thanks to the idea of turning Aidan's passion for drawing monsters into a money-generating life-saver.

The little boy has sold more than 3,000 drawings, many of them sketched in his hospital bed as he underwent gruelling treatment.

Total sales topped more than $30,000 and Aidan has sold enough that his family were able to take their home off the market and they no longer require further funding for his care.



Devoted: Aidan with his parents and Katie and Wiley, who put their home in Kansas on the market after his diagnosis


Wylie's sister Mandi Ostein, 26, was the one who came up with the idea to help pay the bills by selling Aidan's artwork.

She said: 'My lucky number was 60; I just wanted to sell 60 prints. And now here we are at 2,460.

'I have two printers constantly going in my dining room. In between taking care of my baby, I've been trying to fill orders.'

Ms Ostein said she prints out Aidan's drawings of Wolfman, Gill-man, Nosferatu the vampire and other scary monsters on quality photo paper so people aren't just getting a piece of paper.

She has now received orders from Japan, Italy, Brazil and other far-flung locations all over the world.

She said: 'It's absolutely unbelievable. We're just small-town people from the Midwest. This doesn't happen to us.

'Just thinking of him being sick, for someone in your family to be that sick, it's just devastating.'



Treatment: Aidan's family is no longer selling the monster drawings after raising enough money for his hospital treatment


source: dailymail

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