Childhood Cancer Held My Family Hostage
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and our color is gold
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. We wear gold ribbons, gild our profile pictures and status updates in gold, and beg whoever lights up the Empire State Building to turn that damn building gold for one day (it’s never happened).
This is the month we highlight the tiny warriors in our lives — the survivors, the fighters, and the children, like my daughter Ana, that we’ve lost to this relentless disease.
The stories vary from child to child and family to family. They link us together, a trail of unfortunate families, from the moment we get that first, terrible diagnosis. The nightmare typically begins with some version of the words, “Your child has cancer.”
Ours started in 2012 with a stomach ache and a tumor. It ended five years later with a funeral.
My family was initiated into the “cancer club” twelve Septembers ago, just two years after President Obama officially made September Childhood Cancer Awareness Month via a presidential proclamation.
Before Ana’s diagnosis, I thought I was aware of childhood cancer. I thought donating to charities like Make-A-Wish® and St. Jude made me aware. I thought that since my younger daughter…
