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Introducing The Carlos "Bebe" Alvarado Fund at Mount Sinai Hospital
The Carlos "Bebe" Alvarado Fund is designed to make supportive and palliative care available to patients in Mount Sinai Hospital - whether they can afford it or not.
Healthier food options, quiet space, staff who weren't stretched quite so thin... these were things that contributed to my husband Carlos' recovery each time he entered the hospital during his 18 month illness. This may seem obvious - we are talking about quality of life and quality of care - but our general barometer for care is set so low that these basic needs are made to sound like amenities we can do without. I am here to tell you that advocating for these resources was a game changer in my beloved's ability to fight his illness, with dignity, and return home as quickly as possible, to our children and to me. This shouldn't be something we have to fight for or pay for. This is something we want for our loved ones; This is something we want for ourselves; This is something we want for our neighbors. Of course, the conversation around healthcare inequality is a larger one, but Carlos and I wanted to do something that could impact folks immediately.
With an initial goal of $100,000, we will begin by scaling up the supportive care and palliative care programs at Mount Sinai Hospital - two areas that lack proper funding and resources.
I have big dreams for what we can do with Carlos' fund... and then I remember my husband was a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other kind of person. So to perfectly mirror our partnership, we will continue to set big goals, have big dreams and take it one step at a time. Join us.
Exactly two weeks before my husband died, he sat up in his bed and said these words:
I think, in my lifetime, I've touched, respected, made people feel heard...
And I think that was a goal of mine.
I did what I could.
And I hope it's made a difference in people's lives.
Carlos “Bebe” Alvarado’s purpose will live on.