Childhood Cancer is NOT rare

I’ve heard it said so many times that childhood cancer is rare and I don’t think that is true. It’s definitely not rare to me now that my son died of cancer. I knew of one other child that died of cancer and another one who survived it before I was involved with St. Baldrick’s. Then the first year I went to the local event in our area, I saw that it definitely was not rare.

Now that I am the part of an organization called Friends of Kids with Cancer which is an agency that helps families whose children are currently battling cancer as well as families who have lost children to cancer, I KNOW it’s not rare.

I truly believe it is passed of as rare as to not draw a lot of attention to the fact that the research for childhoood cancer is vastly underfunded. And the more I learn about it, the more I find out that it is also vastly under researched. My mom brain wants to know why. Is it because there is no money in childhood cancer? Is it because no one wants to talk about it? Is it because thinking about a child under going horrific, barbaric treatments that were not designed for children is too much for people to think about? I think it’s a combination of all of these things. I never thought speaking about childhood cancer would be something I would do but I know it has to happen.

There is so much attention put on breast cancer and now there are millions, if not billions, of dollars raised every year to go towards research. Because of this, a lot more women survive it. So how about if we move our focus to a different area of research? I will never understand why people aren’t moving heaven and earth to find a cure for cancer so that children don’t have to go through this. Children’s lives should not be cut short because people don’t want to talk about this.