September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

Dear friends and family~

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Why you might be asking yourselves is Stacie posting about this? None of her children/family has ever had to deal with this. You are right. Thankfully so, we have never had to deal with or endure the years of torture and torment one single cell can cause. I thank God every single day that my boys are healthy and I hope and pray they stay that way. Why then am I interested in it? It all started back in 2004 with a little baby named Allie Scott whose story I found out about from a friend. Allie was diagnosed at the age of 4 months old with AML, Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Leukemia is a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. It attacks every part of the body. She was such a little fighter and man was she cute!! I will never forget when I logged onto her mom's site on September 13, 2004 to see that Allie had gone to play with the Angels. I cried and cried, it was the first time anything horrible had happened to a family that I had been following. Allie had made a huge impact on me and right then I felt like I was here to do something that has to do with childhood cancer. I still sort of do. In all honesty I would LOVE to go back to school to become a childhood cancer nurse. But I digress...so when Allie passed away I then had found a few other children who were fighting this awful disease. I prayed for them and often would offer them and their families encouragement and many prayers.
Childhood cancer is such a horrible thing and I PRAY it never comes and invades our family's life. But I wanted to make everyone aware that it is out there and this is the month to educate yourself about it! To pray for all the families that have children who are fighting this horrible monster or have lost their child to it. Just recently a friend of mines' daughter Emma passed away from a brain tumor. Emma was 10 and such a beautiful little girl. My heart breaks for her family, but her death hit me really hard because she was a little girl who I have MET, I had TALKED to, and been with. It really hit home.

Some facts from: curesearch.org

Nearly 30% of U.S. population is under the age of 20. In this age group:

* Approximately 12,400 are diagnosed with cancer each year.
* In 1998, about 2500 died of cancer.

About one in 300 boys and one in 333 girls will develop cancer before the age of 20. (The distribution of boys and girls diagnosed varies by type of childhood cancer.)

The incidence, or frequency that cancer is diagnosed, has risen since the 1970s for some types of childhood cancer, but rates have been fairly stable in more recent years.

~~~Why has the cure rate for childhood cancer risen so much further and faster than the cure rate for adult cancers?

For the past 40 years, childhood cancer research-physicians have worked cooperatively at institutions throughout North America, setting up clinical trials, and collectively studying the results. During that time, the cure rate has risen from almost zero to well over 75% for children with cancer.

Adults are usually treated at individual institutions and are rarely enrolled in clinical trials, and so the research results have been less dramatic. However, new treatment techniques resulting from childhood cancer research often have application for adult cancer patients. For example, chemotherapy was first used on children with cancer.

The sad thing is, childhood cancer is one of the most underfunded researches out there. This I do not understand. These children are our future, why are we not doing more to find cures for childhood cancer? Here is another great article regarding that:

Budget Cuts May Hurt Children with Cancer
Research is the Only Cure for Cancer……
Support Childhood Cancer Research

In recent years, the amount of funding for childhood cancer clinical research from the federal government has been declining. In response to the most recent cutbacks, the National Cancer Institute has decreased funding which especially impacts childhood cancer research. As a result, the Children’s Oncology Group (COG), the world’s pre-eminent childhood cancer research organization, has been forced to put 20 new studies on hold and decrease enrollment in new clinical trials by more than 400 children next year.

After being told “your child has cancer”, as a parent, you want to hear “your child will receive cutting edge treatment and the very best that research has to offer."
For now, cuts will not affect children currently on treatment for childhood cancer.

Children currently enrolled in clinical trials at Children’s Oncology Group (COG) centers will not be directly affected by these funding cuts. The COG physicians and nurses will continue to provide excellent care. Future patients will receive the current best known treatment available at each of the COG hospitals as a result of clinical practice standards made possible through COG research.

More than 90% of children with cancer are treated at COG member institutions in the United States, the vast majority in a clinical trial. The collaboration of COG allows children with cancer to remain close to home for their treatment and care.

The rapid sharing of information through the Children’s Oncology Group has led to phenomenal improvements in childhood cancer survival rates.
There is urgency in confronting the number one cause of death due to disease in children.

Everything that we know about saving the lives of children diagnosed with cancer has resulted from research. Forty years ago, cure rates for children with cancer were lower than 10%. Thanks to funded research 78% of childhood cancer patients overall are now able to be cured.

While the success is impressive, the status quo is not acceptable. Each year, more than 12,500 children and adolescents are diagnosed with childhood cancer.

At a time when breakthroughs can be made in treating all childhood cancer and the quality of life for children with cancer improved, the cutbacks in government funding will endanger the development of new clinical trials and threaten progress in curing childhood cancer.

For the first time since its founding, the decrease in funding to the Children’s Oncology Group places research in a dangerous position where studies and accompanying laboratory research that hold promise will not take place.
Each day that pediatric cancer research goes unfunded or under funded, the road to discovering new treatments and cures becomes longer, putting children at risk.

Research is the only key to the cure.
CureSearch National Childhood Cancer Foundation looks to the private sector to support childhood cancer research.

While we work to educate our leaders and the public about making childhood cancer a national priority, CureSearch National Childhood Cancer Foundation must also secure gifts from individuals, corporations and foundations. When the lives of our children are at stake, it will take a public-private partnership to fund fully the research to cure and prevent cancer in children.
The loss of one more child to cancer is one too many.
How can you help fund the cure?

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Contact your congressional representative
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Help Fund the Cure for childhood cancer
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Become a corporate sponsor


About CureSearch

National Childhood Cancer Foundation, a non-profit charity, is dedicated to raising funds and awareness for the Children’s Oncology Group, the world’s largest cooperative childhood cancer research organization.

The Children’s Oncology Group unites the best of the academic and clinical research worlds to move the most promising treatments from the lab into clinical trials. This association of more than 5,000 dedicated experts in childhood cancer research and treatment are located at more than 235 children’s and university hospitals, and cancer centers in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Together, the National Childhood Cancer Foundation and the Children’s Oncology Group are committed to conquering childhood cancer through scientific discovery and compassionate care – until we reach the day when every child with cancer is cured and cancer can be prevented.

Please take time out of your day sometime this month to at least say a prayer for these kids and their families, and thank God or whoever your thank for the healthy children in your lives. And if you feel moved, donate to research, walk in a walk get involved to help get rid of childhood cancer once and for all!