We spent part of the day meeting with Illinois Congressman Sean Casten thanking him for signing Ellie's law. I called Congressman Casten right after my mom died at the request of the Brain Aneurysm Foundation and asked him to sign HR 1648. This is an important bill especially for those who traveled to DC lobbied, worked really hard asking Congress for research and awareness were seeking for passage of Ellie’s Law. Ellie's Law is a bill that seeks federal funding for brain aneurysm research. It is named in honor of Ellie Helton, a 14-year-old Apex, NC teenager, who died on July 16, 2014 as a result of a brain aneurysm. The bill, HR 1648, provides $5 million each fiscal year, for five years, to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) to conduct or support further comprehensive research on brain aneurysms, studying a broader patient population diversified by age, sex, and race.Congressman Casten did sign the bill!!! We met with him this morning to thank him for supporting the bill and asked him to support another awareness resolution. We are quite honored to be able to meet with Congressman Casten and hit him with a lot of items on our brain aneurysm "list" which he was open to. I also gave him a copy of my book 🙂 (photograph(copyright 2019, Lee Balgemann)
