“I never thought I’d hear those words, ‘Your daughter has cancer’ … and then one day I did,” says Melissa Bradley, whose 4-year-old daughter, Belle, is currently in treatment.
The devastating reality is that a parent hears that news every three minutes.
And while childhood cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in kids under 15, research remains underfunded — currently, less than 4 percent of the National Cancer Institute’s budget is allocated to research it.
That’s why families, medical professionals and advocates are Going Gold this September for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month — to give the disease, and the kids affected by it, the attention they deserve.
“People tend to shy away from such a subject because it is terrifying to even fathom happening to someone you love,” says Paula Crosby Flake, whose son and husband both died of cancer. “There is not enough ‘talk’ about pediatric cancer.”
While it is devastating to see children who have to fight this disease, or hear the stories of those who we’ve lost to it, their parents want their daughters’ and sons’ stories to be told — and no two are the same.
