Ten-year-old Sam Wasstrom has been in and out of the hospital since he was three.
Diagnosed with a form of juvenile arthritis, Sam, who lives in Williams Lake, is still receiving further diagnoses for his condition, which may turn out to be Lupus, says his mother Jill Wasstrom.

“He’s been sick since he was three and a half,” she says. “The stuff he’s gone through has been horrific.”
His auto-immune disorder has meant numerous hospital visits, pain, depression, and “poking and prodding,” which Sam hopes no other child will have to go through.

On Friday, April 17 from 5 to 9 p.m. and on Sunday, April 19 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sam will be at Save-On-Foods selling wristbands he designed in order to raise money for the Ross Petty Research Chair at BC Children’s Hospital to help kids like him.Sam is donating all of the money he receives through Celebs for Kids, an organization set up to help kids with arthritis and lupus. He hopes to help find a cure so no other child will need to be a “guinea pig.”His goal is to raise $2,000 from the wristbands he is selling for a minimum donation of $5 each to help the organization and its mission to build the research centre at BC Children’s Hospital.
“We definitely need something like this,” Jill says.