September

September...football...the onset of fall weather...the beginning of hoodie season...evening firepit...the start of pumpkin-flavored everything...  This year, September has a new meaning for me...September is childhood cancer awareness month.  This has slipped by me in the past.  Sure, I knew October was breast cancer awareness month.  The NFL teams (and refs) wear pink, it's all over the Internet and media.  It's hard to miss.  And breast cancer awareness IS important.  Breast cancer can be very treatable, and can be detected early, thus awareness should be promoted.

Now, however, childhood cancer awareness is even more important to me.  It's something that I, an educated adult who works with children every day, hardly even thought of before it became personal.  And how many other "old me's" are out there?  People that have heard of someone whose life has been touched by childhood cancer, but otherwise thinks little of it?

We SHOULD be thinking about childhood cancer.  When a child is diagnosed with cancer, they are typically treated with methods that are 20+ years old, and were developed to treat adults.  These children suffer horrible side effects from the treatments, and these treatments can cause life-long problems (assuming the treatment is effective.)  And when a child is diagnosed, it turns the lives of that child's whole family upside-down.  Moms and dads become more educated in medical terminology than they ever thought possible.  Siblings have to learn to deal with having a sick sibling, and having emotionally and often physically absent parents.  Not because they choose to, but because cancer invaded their family.  Children diagnosed with cancer may face developmental delays, missed school, and multiple long-term hospitalizations.

In some ways, my family is lucky.  Henry's battle was fast and furious, he fought with all he had, but we did not have to watch him suffer for long.  At the time, those twelve days seemed unending.  But he was, in some ways, one of the lucky ones.  He is no longer suffering.  He is no longer being poked and prodded, stuck in a hospital bed, having poison pumped into his body to kill the cancer.  That is not a judgement against those who are still fighting alongside their children...we would be doing the same thing if we had been given the chance!  There is nothing "easy" about cancer in general, and childhood cancer in particular.

As we move through September, my mission is to educate...to remind people that we do have these children fighting for their lives...that we have families torn apart every day when they hear the awful words, "your child has cancer,"...and that we have families (of fighters and angels) fighting every day of every year to educate and advocate for these littlest warriors.