Hello all,
I gotta tell ya, October has ALWAYS been my favorite month. I love the whole idea of October.........the color of changing leaves, the crisp feel of the air, the smell of bonfires. Its a GREAT month. If you are a fan of Susan G Komen I am sure you are just as excited about the change in months a few days from now because as I am sure most every person knows, October is Breast Cancer awareness month. The sister of Susan G Komen, both from Peoria, IL (MY old stomping ground) has turned her sister's story into a world wide fund raising phenomena. Seriously. You can check out her story here:
http://ww5.komen.org/AboutUs/SusanGKomensStory.html
Last October I promised myself I would write this blog the next September if at all possible and it looks like I am just gonna get it in just under the wire. Its September 27.
Last year, I was at my local pharmacy on October 1st. Every pill bottle lid in the entire store had turned PINK over night. Honestly. It was like POOF, pink explosion.
Later in the month we were watching Monday night football. Do you know what those big burly players went and did for the ENTIRE world to see?? They wore PINK socks. Amazing.
Continuing on in the month the canvasing of pink continued. Store owners all wore pink on a designated October day, college students rocked, jumped, ran and danced all hours of the night wearing pink to raise money for the cause, hospital gift shops turned EVERYTHING pink, flower stores increased the number of blush colored flowers for sale, pink ribbons were worn on thousands of lapels and pink car magnets were seen in every parking lot.
Watch for the color changes in a few days folks..............you CAN'T miss it. Watch for that and then think of this.........
Susan's sister has done an AMAZING job at increasing awareness and raising money for breast cancer research and its REALLY important..........TRULY it is. I have lost friends, students, family members and casual acquaintances to breast cancer. It HAS to be stopped.
But with only three days left before the great transition to paint-the-world-pink month, can we pause together for just a brief moment?
SEPTEMBER is CHILDHOOD cancer awareness month. If you are a Facebook friend you have had to deal with me posting a new childhood cancer fact every single day this month. I won't apologize for it. Is it depressing? YUP. Is it depressing ENOUGH to motivate you to do something to help the cause? That's up to you. But here's the thing. Someone has to do the work because the parents of the kids who are sick don't have the time. See, they're busy spending time with their kids while they are still around to hold. (Although truth be told, most of the childhood cancer fundraising organizations have begun from the inspiration of a child!)
There currently is no Susan G. Komen of the childhood cancer world because there are so many DIFFERENT kinds of childhood cancer. And EACH one is worthy of fund-raising attention. While September and the color GOLD have not swept the country (yet) in the same way pink has (next month), there are still some efforts worth mentioning.
30 miles North of Peoria (remember, the home of Susan?) there lies a sleepy little town of 6,000 folks.....Chillicothe, Illinois. My nephew and his family are from there. I went to school there as a kid myself. In the 8th grade I (quite badly) sang the song "Tomorrow" from Annie in our annual variety show. The last girl to sing that song in that school on that stage?? She wasn't in the audience when it was my turn. Because she had died. From cancer. As a high school student.
Anyway, in honor of this child, my nephew, his parents began a baseball tournament years ago. Over the years the tournament has grown and many of the townspeople turn out to volunteer, buy and sell tee shirts and remember this kid named Brad who loved the game but could no longer play because he lost his life. This same community got together and formed a team to participate in the St. Jude run. Last summer, this little community raised over $262,000 for St. Jude when all was said and done. THIS from a town of 6,000 people.
My nephew's sister, who was terrified of hospitals before his illness is now a nursing student. She wants to be a pediatric oncology nurse. My high school girlfriend's daughter is enjoying her freshman year at college where she plans to become a medical researcher. Why? To cure childhood cancer. Today, my children's little Catholic school (of only 78 or so students) offered the children the option of donating .50 cents to Cure Search in exchange for wearing jeans to school versus their uniforms. My healthy 9 year old son Adam who forgot to bring his money to school found .75 cents on the ground and donated that. Those 78 kids raised $144.00. These are all important and meaningful steps towards catching the pink craze. But its just a start. We have SO FAR to go.
Below please find just SOME of the facts that have been gathered about childhood cancer. Run the numbers. Do your homework. And then ask yourself how YOU can begin to make a difference today. I know I sound like an infomercial and I know the facts below are not easy ones to read. But with attention to detail, I have every faith that in time September can catch up to October in importance. This blog has had over 4,500 hits since its inception. If each person who reads it does one thing to help the kids survive just one day more I have to believe that in and of itself THAT can make at least a small difference. I will close now and go home (I'm at the office) to hold my kids. See, I'm real lucky because I get to do that. Once I am there and in that moment, I will say a prayer for all of the parents who cannot hold their kids tonight. Because right now, its the LEAST I can do.
CHILDHOOD CANCER AWARENESS FACTS
Each year approximately 13,500 parents will
hear the words, “your child has cancer.”
SOURCES: CureSearch.org; ChildrensOncologyGroup.org
Every day, it is
estimated that 36 children are diagnosed with cancer.
The average age of a child diagnosed with
cancer is 6 years old.
Worldwide a child is diagnosed with cancer
every 3 minutes.
Childhood cancers are not related to
lifestyle factors and little can be done to prevent them, unlike many adult
cancers.
Childhood cancer occurs regularly, randomly,
and spares no ethic group, socioeconomic class or geographic region.
Before they turn 20 about 1 in 300 boys and 1
in 333 girls will be diagnosed with cancer.
More than 40,000 children undergo treatment
for cancer each year.
Kids’ cancer kills more children than AIDs,
asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrosis and congenital anomalies combined.
On average, 1 in every 4 elementary schools
has a child with cancer. The average high school has 2 students who are
current or former cancer patients.
The number of diagnosed cases of children’s
cancer has not declined in 20 years.
Children’s cancer remains the number one
cause of death by disease in children.
One out of 5 children diagnosed with cancer
will die (the survival rate is based on a “5 year survival” meaning that if a
child survives 5 years after diagnoses he/she is considered to survive, but we
know that many of these kids are dying after 5 years of treatment and
therefore, more than 1 out of 5 children is dying of cancer.
Over a 10
year period, the number goes to 1 in 4.
Every day 250 kids around the world die of a
children’s cancer – that’s 91,250 kids lost to cancer worldwide every year.
Three out of five children who survive
children’s cancer suffer long term or late side effects such as infertility,
heart failure, heart damage, secondary cancer, lung damage, hearing loss,
growth defects.
Five kids a
day die from secondary or other long term effects.
Even for kids who
survive cancer, the battle is not over, because of the harsh treatments and the
lack of effective treatments. By the time they are 45 years old more than
95% of kids’ cancer survivors will have a chronic health problem and 80% will
have a severe or life threatening condition(s).
The average age of death for a child with
cancer is 8 years old, causing childhood cancer victims to lose an average of
69 years of their expected life, a significant loss of productivity to society.
Many adult cancers can be diagnosed early,
but 80% of kids’ cancer has already spread to other areas of the body by the
time it is diagnosed.
SOURCE: StBaldricks.org
Cancer symptoms in child – fever, swollen
glands, enema, bruises, bone and joint pain, infections – often are suspected
to be and treated as other childhood illnesses; hence the reason why most
childhood cancers are in children less than 8 years old are in progressed
stages and metastasized.
Physical and neurocognitive disabilities
resulting from treatment may prevent childhood cancer survivors from fully
participating in school, social activities and eventually the work place, which
can and does cause depression and feelings of isolation.
One in 3 children diagnosed with cancer will
not live out a normal life span.
Radiation to a child’s brain can
significantly damage cognitive function, or if radiation is given at a very
young age, limit the ability to read, do basic math, tell time, or even
talk.
In the last 20 years, the FDA has initially
approved only 2 drugs for any childhood cancer – and half of all chemotherapies
used for children’s cancers are over 25 years old.
SOURCES:
PAC2; CureChildhoodCancer.ning.com; SolvingKidsCancer.org; Jeff Gordon Childrens Foundation
$5.067 billion in tax dollars is given by the
U.S. government to fund cancer research at the National Institute of
Health. Less than 4% of the entire amount is spent on research of
childhood cancers of ALL types and there are 12 major types of childhood cancer
and many subtypes.
$603 million was dedicated to research for
breast cancer and $315 million just for lung cancer – both adult cancers.
For all kids’ cancer, only $208 million was dedicated to funding for search and
clinical trials.
It costs an average of $802 million in
research and development to bring one drug to market. From 1948 to 2003
the federal regulators approved 120 new therapies for cancer – only 15 of these
had pediatric information on the labeling.
Each child in the U.S. diagnosed with cancer
receives approximately 1/6 of the federal research support allocated to each
patient afflicted with AIDS.
Pharmaceutical companies fund over 50% of
adult cancer research, but less than 5% for children’s cancer research.
Sadly, we learn that the American Cancer
Society directs only approximately 1 cent to childhood cancer research for
every dollar of public support. That means for every $1,000 donated to
the American Cancer Society, only $10 goes to kids’ cancer.
Unfortunately, The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is not much better – only 2
cents is directed to childhood cancer research for every dollar of public
support. The following childhood cancer support groups direct at least an
average of 80 cents of every dollar received to childhood cancer research and
support.
SOURCES: StBaldricks.org;
AlexsLemonade.org; CureSearch.org;
RallyFoundation.org; CookiesForKidsCancer.org; BearNecessities.org; BePositive.org; AWOCCF.org
The average age of an adult when diagnosed
with cancer is 67 and the average numbers of years lost to an adult who dies of
cancer is 15; but the average age of diagnosis of a child with cancer is 6 and
the number of years of life lost to cancer for a child that dies is 71.
This is why Dr. Eugenie Kleinerman, head of the division of pediatrics at
Children Cancer Hospital at MD Anderson Cancer Center stated that “curing
childhood cancer is the equivalent of curing breast cancer in terms of
productive life years saved.” When children die of cancer they are robbed
of growing up, marrying, having children of their own, creating something beautiful
the world has never seen, or even discovering a cure for cancer.
Childhood cancers affect more potential
patient years of life lost than any other cancer except breast and lung cancer.
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