National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

We are halfway through the month and have yet to see any news or ads or anything honoring this month for our kids other than families and groups that are directly linked to childhood cancer. The only two exceptions I know of are Chili's (eat there Sept. 29th, profits go to St. Jude's for research!) and a Top Rated Article on Forbes, and only because the writers daughter is battling osteosarcoma.


Our kids don't know they don't have cures for most of these pediatric cancers, don't know that one of their 5 cancer friends will die of cancer. People turn away when they hear "childhood cancer" because they don't want to think about the devestation it brings to such young children. Yes the bald heads are cute, but that's all they want to see, not the bone thin skeletons walking around because they are too sick to eat from the poisonous chemicals we are using to kill the poisonous tumors in their little bodies. It's a tough world to live in. Before Lukas was diagnosed, cancer to me was my grandmother's breast cancer, her sister's breast cancer, their other sister's thyroid cancer, my aunt's lung cancer (brought on by decades of smoking), and my dad's throat cancer (and he doesn't smoke!). That was it, my vocabulary didn't include CHILDHOOD cancer. Older people got it. One of my good friends in KS had Melanoma, she's my age, but they caught it and cut it out. Beyond that, I never knew and was pretty much oblivious to children getting cancer and absolutely beyond oblivious to BABIES getting cancer! November 18th changed my life and the way I see the world now..... Kurt and I were told Lukas had a tumor in his head that had most likely been there for months, MONTHS!!! We were rushed to Cook Children's and after agonizing hours in the ER there, moved to our now second home on the 3rd floor-Hemotology/Oncology unit. (Hemotology is for blood disorders, Oncology is for cancer). Since then I have been introduced to the lack of funding and treatments for Lukas and all the other babies and kids battling cancer every day. Here are the cold hard facts.



September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

*Each school day, 46 children are diagnosed with cancer.

*On the average 12,500 children and teens will be diagnosed with some form of cancer each year in this country.

*One in 330 children will develop cancer by age 20.

*Although the 5 year survival rate is steadily increasing, one quarter of children will die 5 years from the time of diagnosis.

*Cancer remains the #1 disease killer of America's children - more than Cystic Fibrosis, Muscular Dystrophy, Asthma and AIDS COMBINED!!

*In the U.S. almost 3,000 children do not survive cancer each year.

*Over the past two decades, only ONE new cancer drug has been approved for pediatric use.

*Currently there are between 30-40,000 children undergoing cancer treatment in the U.S.

*As a nation, we spend over $14 BILLION (that's with a B!!!) per year on the space program, but only $35 MILLION on Childhood Cancer Research each year.

*There are 15 children diagnosed with cancer for every one child diagnosed with pediatric AIDS. Yet, the U.S. invests approximately $595,000 for research per victim of pediatric AIDS and only $20,000 for each victim of childhood cancer.

*Research funds are scarce as most money is diverted to well-publicized adult forms of cancer, such as breast and prostate.

*Right now, this second, somewhere in America, there are 7 children fighting for their lives who won't live through the day.