The Sad Truth About Kids and Cancer

The Sad Truth About Kids and Cancerby Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff, Executive Director/CEOHealthy Child Healthy WorldKiwi had only been sick once; never on any sort of medication, not even Tylenol. All of that changed on Friday, July 31st, 2010 when we found ourselves in the Emergency Room because Kiwi’s left hand had begun to spasm periodically all that day. Our lives went from Kiwi never being in the hospital and only at the doctors once (but never on any medications), to being poked and prodded for hours in the ER. I had a very difficult time comprehending the next few days of my life. It started in the ER on a Friday night and moved slowly through the weekend, to an MRI on Sunday showing that my darling 22 month old daughter had a large tumor on the right side of her brain.Your daughter has cancer.They are words no parent ever wants to hear, yet the sad fact is that every sixty minutes, a child is diagnosed with cancer and every six hours, a child will lose her battle to cancer. Cases of pediatric cancer have increased 30% over the last 30 years, to the point that cancer is now the nation’s leading cause of death by disease in children.Read the rest of this post about the increase in childhood cancer and what we can do about it at:http://healthychild.org/blog/comments/the_sad_truth_about_kids_and_cancer/