Hoping for a warm spring

https://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/AaronMpetry

Cancer is an ugly, awful disease that we should all be working to kick right into oblivion. And the good news is that we're getting better all the time at treating people who have cancer. Unfortunately, it's harder to treat cancer in kids. Most cancer treatments target groups of rapidly growing cells and attack them. The thing is, kids can often be described as a group of rapidly growing cells. So the treatments that kids get can often cause even more problems, or even expose them to risk for secondary cancer. Imaging curing your child of one cancer, and finding out that the treatment has given them another. It happens.

When Teddy was in Children's the first time, I saw a lot of kids with cancer and their parents in the hallways and in the cafeteria. Kids with cancer, on average, are in the hospital for 12 days per stay. Their survival rate is around 80%, excluding the most common type of cancer (Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which has a 90% survival rate). For reference, kids like Teddy with Truncus have around a 97% survival rate. For all the horribleness that went with Teddy's early time in the hospital, it's acute, occasional problems. And after the surgery, he's on a half a children's asprin a day. He used to be on some other drugs that ran us about $100 a month. The average cancer treatment for a child costs the family $35,000, and after the fact, those kids will have side effects that will make their childhoods more difficult, and will slow their development drastically.

St. Baldrick's doesn't help with defraying costs of treatments. They don't help with costs of transportation or housing to keep people nearer to treatment. Those are worthy things, but there are already other charities that help with that (Ronald McDonald House and the American Cancer Society for example). What they help with is research directly into treatments and cures for childhood cancer. They help move the needle on that 80% number. As a parent who's seen first hand what it's like for a kid to be in the ICU, I think that's the most important thing we can do. So if you can, help out. Donate a couple of dollars for my head to be shaved on March 18th, and help kids have a better chance of a normal childhood, just like Teddy.