Childhood Cancer Facts

For the people who do... or don't understand.
This deserves to be read, and read by anyone and everyone.

*Childhood cancers are the #1 disease killer of children - more than asthma, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, and pediatric AIDS combined.

*The U.S. invests approximately $595,000 for research per victim of pediatric AIDS and only $20,000 for each victim of childhood cancer.

*The National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) federal budget was $4.6 billion. Of that, breast cancer received 12%, prostate cancer received 7%, and all 12 major groups of pediatric cancers combined received less than 3%.

*Childhood cancer is not a single disease, but rather many different types that fall into 12 major categories. Common adult cancers are extremely rare in children, yet many cancers are almost exclusively found in children.

*Childhood Cancers are cancers that primarily affect children, teens, and young adults. When cancer strikes children and young adults it affects them differently than it would an adult.

*Attempts to detect childhood cancers at an earlier stage, when the disease would react more favorably to treatment, have largely failed. Young patients often have a more advanced stage of cancer when first diagnosed. (Approximately 20% of adults with cancer show evidence the disease has spread, yet almost 80% of children show that the cancer has spread to distant sites at the time of diagnosis).

*Cancer in childhood occurs regularly, randomly, and spares no ethnic group, socioeconomic class, or geographic region.

*The cause of most childhood cancers are unknown and at present, cannot be prevented. (Most adult cancers result from lifestyle factors such as smoking, diet, occupation, and other exposure to cancer-causing agents).

*One in every 330 Americans will develop cancer by the age of 20. On the average, 12,500 children and adolescents in the U.S. are diagnosed with cancer each year.

*On the average, 1 in every 4 elementary school has a child with cancer. The average high school has two students who are a current or former cancer patient. In the U.S., about 46 children and adolescents are diagnosed with cancer every weekday.

*While the cancer death rate has dropped more dramatically for children than for any other age group, 2,300 children and teenagers will die each year from cancer.

*Childhood leukemia (making up the largest group of childhood cancers) was once a certain death sentence, but now can be cured almost 80% of the time.

*Although cure rates are steadily increasing, 35% of children will die.

* Some forms of childhood cancers have proven so resistant to treatment that, in spite of research, a cure is illusive.

*More than 70 percent of children diagnosed with cancer become long-term survivors and the majority of them are considered cured after 2-5 years 9depending on type). However, long-term effects of surviving the treatments for childhood cancer can affect these children's futures and life.

*Several childhood cancers continue to have a very poor prognosis, including: brain stem tumors, metastatic sarcomas, relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and relapsed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

*Cancer treatment can cause serious side effects that may last a lifetime or shorten their life.

*Detecting childhood cancers at an early stage, when the disease would react more favorably to treatment, is extremely difficult.

*Cancer symptoms in children – fever, swollen glands, anemia, bruises and infection – are often suspected to be, and at the early stages are treated as, other childhood illnesses.

*Even with insurance coverage, a family will have out-of pocket expenses of about $40,000 per year, not including travel.

*Research on the emotional impact of childhood cancer finds that parents and siblings report even greater longterm emotional impacts than the diagnosed child

*Every family is potentially at risk.

*In almost all cases, childhood cancers arise from non-inherited mutations (or changes) in the genes of growing cells. As these errors occur randomly and unpredictably, there is currently no effective way to predict or prevent them.

*Nationally, childhood cancer is 20x more prevalent than pediatric AIDS.

*Pediatric AIDS receives 4x the funding that childhood cancer receives.

*In one month there are 2x as many deaths from childhood cancer as pediatric AIDS for the entire year.

*How do you explain chemotherapy and radiation to a child? One girl’s parents called it “magic water” — magic water that would make the pain in her legs go away. They promised her the pain would go away and it worked for 3 years.When the magic water stopped working and their little girl asked if the next round of magic water would help the pain go away, the parents could only reply that they hoped it would.

*September is Childhood Cancer Awareness month.

*7 months ago: WASHINGTON - JULY 29: U.S. President George W. Bush signs H.R. 1553, the Caroline Pryce Walker Conquor Childhood Cancer Avt of 2008 in the Oval Office of the White house as Eden Adams, 8, Wyatt Rech, 6; U.S. Representative Deborah Pryce (-OH) and Hannah Lewis, 7 look on July 29, 2008 in Washington, D.C. The act will fund research for childhood cancer.

*Fight for a cure. Be aware.It happened to our boy, and it can happen to anyone.We love you Aiden! Keep fighting!

I Start Again

I Start Again


This is about my son’s cancer. I love you monkey boy.




My head hangs low.
Somehow I got caught up... between your lies and your truth.
You have stolen my life.

Yesterday is so far behind me. Tomorrow is like rubbing my skin on asphalt.
Today? Today is waiting. Waiting for familiar things.
The wind laughing around my face.
The trees looking down at me and smiling brightly.
The scent of water making my body shiver happily.
My mother’s gentle lips touching my cheek.
My father’s hand holding mine tight.
Anticipation has me glued.

Sometimes I think this cycle never ends.
How can you leave me standing?
When my body is so small it wants to break.
You've cut me down to size.
I never imagined.

Familiar things. Rolling down a hill of wet grass.
Sticking my nose in a pile of flowers. Oh, the smell.

You've opened up my scars, and given me new ones.
I try to stitch you up, and you just cut the thread.
I keep crying, you keep going.
I want to make you taste this, now.
I feel my brain quivering with fright.
It has no understanding of what its body is doing.
It has lost control, control it was made to have. It was stolen.

My heart is beating faster. We could fall apart.

I'm bleeding out on country roads that carry the strong scent of evergreen.
I stare to the sky with my arms stretching up as far as they will go.
"Who are you?” I scream.
Gazing at what is supposed to be familiar. What I long for. What was taken.

Familiar.
Liar. You brought back what I murdered. Murdered ghosts coming back to haunt.
I search everywhere, and still, nothing.
Will you be on the other side? Or will you forget me?
Cells are being taken without my permission.
I think in thousands of broken pieces.
The spirits I adore, they are far away now.
They don't even understand why I'm here.
All they know is that they were disowned.
All I know is I have no choice.

You chose to come here. You chose to take me away.
You chose to make me fight a fight I'll never know how to.
I don't even know where you came from.
There is never a reason why with you.

I want my freedom back. The life that all beings take advantage of.
I try to think of tomorrow. But it just still makes my skin pain with road burns.
Yesterday can't ever disappear. Today has no choice.
And tomorrow will always have memories.

I, have to live underground... hide in the dirt. Fall through the cracks of the sidewalk that no one ever looks at. The sidewalk that is walked on by 5000 people a day.

Can I be your enemy?

A world without you is a world that would stop forever. This is dangerous. Corrupt.

I'm saying prayers under street lights.
I see my parents cry, I see them break.
Why are you so blind?

We have to stay here. We have to hang on to a moment.
We have to chase after you, while in one spot.
If we don't, we lose. I cry myself to sleep. Out loud, and inside.
Swallowing too much. So much until it makes my body feel strange. But I have to.
Or you will kill me.

Familiar.
I've always wanted to sail on a ship. Waves of wonder. Skies of everlasting beauty.
Beauty in storms, beauty in sun. I'll love you, I'll always love you.
You will live forever.
Always. Always, and forever.

This; familiarity, it may never start.
I must get back.
I must get back.
Get me back.

Who me?

I am Beth. Yes, Beth is my name. I never really think about my name. Whether I like it, or don't. Whether I'm supposed to wonder about liking it, or not. I go to college. A rundown shit hole they call a college, in this rundown shit hole town. I want to be in college forever. I feel it will make me better than everyone else. And I am probably right when I look around at the kids these days. I've danced for 14 years now. Every kind of dance. I started out in ballet. And though I hate pop and rap music, I do dance my best when dancing to it.

I never told myself... "I want to pop pills!". But come Friday after my fucking week I take a few pain killers, what ever kind, and go to a pub like club. It's old-fashion and comfortable. It's stained glass light fixtures make it soothing. Plus... I work there.
I dance, in clothes that is, to entertain our guests. There are only three of us and we carry our dancing as a privilege there. We have come to grow on our boss.

Larry. He is a good man, a bad man, a noble man... an asshole. He never treats us girls bad. But he is not a protector. He only cares. I met Cal on my own. But, I still look at Larry like he is our introducer. Cal wouldn't have ever been in our pub if it wasn't for Larry. I would have never been in the pub if I didn't want to be a ballerina when I grew up. None the less, we met. He wasn't near me that whole night. I never even really noticed him. But he noticed me.

That night when the bar cleared, the two other girls went with some men, and Larry took his usual dark clothed crew to the back, I sat at the piano. Larry got it for me. Well, for the pub. But because of me, I think.

I played with my entire being. You play different when you are alone. It was so real, my body broke into a piano itself. My fingers, were keys.
I paused mid song because I hit a C. One wrong note out of all my fingers notes. My thumb was supposed to be on the B.

"That was beautiful." Said a voice that lingered on my backbone. I turned abruptly to see, Cal. A man handsome in his own right. He had his own genre. Perfect fitting dark jeans. Muscular, and healthy looking. Light brown hair and light green eyes. He had the weak smell of a wonderful cologne I still can't place. Since that day it's been weak, and enough too. Mm. I guess I say he's his own genre because he seems to have a cloud around him. Some thick aura like cloud. Filled with spirit. Spirit of every kind. Compassion, coldness, sex appeal, and friendship, arrogance, slyness, and honesty. Yes, Cal is honest.

I love him. It's a platonic love. Every in an out of the word platonic, is us. Except for one. I think. We haven't had sex. But, we have a sexual connection. So, maybe we aren't platonic. This, is where our issues are. This, is what separates us, from the world. Everything with us, and around us... is, and isn't, at the same time.