These statistics are not pretty, but until my son was diagnosed, I didn’t think about them one way or another. And gold was just another color in my child’s box of crayons.
But now gold is a voice in which parents of children with pediatric cancers are saying, “Our children matter. And even if they do not have political clout to force the National Health Institute to allocate greater sums of money for research, we will raise awareness of how they matter; we will become that political power!”
And anyone else who cares about our children is sending messages to political powers-that-be that citizens are demanding and supporting efforts to channel greater funding for research for pediatric cancers.
Alex was a child in my group who died from a brain tumor before my son was even diagnosed. During her battle, she began a lemonade stand to raise money to fund research to cure her brain tumor.
Although Alex died when she was only eight, her lemonade stand inspired thousands of copycat lemonade stands run by children who donated the proceeds to her cause. This little girl’s lemonade stand then inspired her parents to create the Alex Lemonade Stand Foundation, which raises awareness of childhood cancer and funds research, and has raised over a 100 million dollars since four-year-old Alex’s very first lemonade sale fifteen years ago.
Alex’s father recently posted a beautiful article written by a local newspaper about a child diagnosed with the very type of brain tumor that Alex had died from. But this child’s story ended very differently as Alex’s foundation had been involved in developing a new drug that effected a remission for this lucky child. That new drug is now available to cure other children, just one seed from Alex’s first tiny efforts to fund research for new cancer treatment for children.
Be Bold, Go Gold is the slogan for pediatric cancer advocacy groups.
And as I watch the gold shimmer in front of me, sitting in my car this September morning in a neighborhood so far from home, I wish my own streets were festooned with gold ribbons, lovingly hung there by our own askanim who are using their political clout to divert and raise funding for pediatric cancer research, sending out a message loud and clear, “We are with you. And we are working as hard as we can to make sure there will be a cure for your child, for all of our children.”
So this month of September, tie a gold ribbon around a tree.
And think of me.