While dancers passed Thon's 15-hour mark on the floor of the Bryce Jordan Center Saturday morning, Four Diamonds' families spent the time getting to know each other over breakfast.

The families said they were grateful -- not only for the family breakfast, but also for all of the support.

Catharine Scott, whose daughter Colleen was diagnosed with cancer when she was only 5, said without the Four Diamonds Fund, paying for Colleen's treatment "probably would have bankrupted us."

Scott estimated that the total cost of treatment was $380,000.

"For a nurse just to come to our house was $1,000," she said. Four Diamonds "paid for everything insurance has not -- doctors, nurses, CT technicians and also research, which is very important," she added.

Being a part of the program, she said, was "like that feeling when you're a little kid and you fall off the bed, and someone's there to grab you. As an adult, when you have a kid that's sick, it's a total free-fall. Four Diamonds caught us and held us."

The breakfast was one of several meals organized by the Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon hospitality committee, which planned the sometimes-hectic delivery and distribution of food and drinks

"It's semi-organized chaos," hospitality committee member Evin Harbitter (junior-human development and family studies) said as she waited to serve food to Four Diamonds' families. "It's half standing around and half running around."

The committee prepares for Thon months in advance but often needs to improvise to keep everyone involved in the event fed.

Hospitality Captain Luciano Ricondo (sophomore-industrial engineering) said the hospitality committee tries to do the best it can when unexpected challenges arise.

"For example," he said, "we were supposed to get 10 cases of apples, but a couple of days prior to Thon a donor said they couldn't do that, so we didn't have any fruit for a meal. We ended up using pineapple from the snack shack [a place for dancer's to get snacks] for the family meal."