About Us

This non-profit organization was founded to support the ongoing research of rare genetic disorders and to assist families dealing with the mounting medical bills and lost wages due to complications of a genetic disorder. The Hands to Angels Foundation was created in honor and memory of our son, Kevin. He was born in February of 2007 with an extremely rare genetic disorder, and despite the tremendously tough year he had in and out of the hospital, he captured the hearts of hundreds with his coy smile, mile-long eyelashes and head full of hair. Kev fought like a trooper until the very end, but unfortunately our special little angel gained his wings into Heaven in February of 2008, just four days shy of his first birthday. As tough as his year was, we recognize how lucky we were to have him for the time that we did, and we are so thankful for every moment we were able to spend with him. It is our hope that easing some of hte financial burden for families who are also coping with many hospitalizations and physician visits will allow them to enjoy their own little angels a little more.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Links

Kevin was born with an unbalanced translocation of his 2nd and 17th chromosomes, which basically amounted to a partial deletion of the long arm of chromosome 2, and a partial trisomy of the short arm of chromosome 17. For you super technical genetic gurus, his karyotype was 46,XY,der(2)t(2;17)(q37.3;p13.1). We found no other documented cases of this particular genetic makeup in the world, so we affectionately refer to it as The Kevin Younkins syndrome.
Some websites we found extremely helpful when Kev was diagnosed:

Unique: The Rare Disorder Support Group
http://www.rarechromo.org/

Chromosome Deletion Outreach
http://www.chromodisorder.org/

If you’d like to read more about Kevin’s journey, please feel free to visit
the online journal I kept for him:
www.caringbridge.org/visit/kpy
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