The Childhood Cancer Blog
The Childhood Cancer Blog
Raymeer was just four months old when an undifferentiated soft tissue sarcoma blocked his airway, causing him to stop breathing.
At age 3, Declan developed headaches that led to the diagnosis of central nervous system rhabdomyosarcoma.
Sonia thought her relentless cough was caused by pneumonia or another respiratory illness. Instead, she learned she had metastatic Ewing sarcoma.
Lakelynn was diagnosed with a rare, inoperable sarcoma at age 3
Taylor was 11 years old when pain in her arm—initially thought to be a sports injury—was diagnosed as osteosarcoma.
Sarcomas account for at least 11% of all pediatric cancer diagnoses,* affecting nearly 1,800 children in the United States each year. The word sarcoma comes from the Greek words for "fleshy" and "tumor," reflecting the fact that these cancers arise in the body's connective tissues. More than 70 different types of sarcoma can affect children, making diagnosis and treatment especially complex.
Because sarcomas can develop almost anywhere in the body, they vary widely in how they grow and how they... Read More
Mike Adkins, Dad to Lily, Chloe and Nicholas
Mike Fee, Dad to Andy
Tony Salerno, Dad to Tony and Sam
David Saenz, Dad to Arden and Alina
Gabe Stephens, Dad to Della
Nick Gilger, Dad to Edie and Kinsey
Bill Fitzgerald, Dad to Cole, Maeve, and Maggie
Craig Boerlin, with grandson Nate
Brandon Issacs, Dad to Emilia, Lynnea, and Louie
On the way to the emergency room, just hours before we would learn our daughter had cancer, my husband Mike turned to me and said, “Whatever this is, we will be okay. Right? We will.”
Our daughter, Lily, was 14 months old, sitting rear-facing in the back seat. As she watched where we had been, Mike was driving us toward where we would go: the emergency room at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the PICU, operating rooms, the oncology floor, Houston for proton radiation therapy, years of physical and occupational therapy, shunt failures, MRIs, and countless moments when we had to... Read More
Arden was diagnosed as a 1-year-old with neuroblastoma. Today, Arden is 8 and a childhood cancer survivor.
At 19 years old, Breeone needed to make fast decisions about preserving her fertility before starting treatment for a rare tumor. (Photo credit: Tony Gray, for Flashes of Hope)
Chris was a senior in high school when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He is now an adult and a dad.
In 1989, researchers interviewed 1,928 survivors of childhood cancer. These, then-adults, had been diagnosed with childhood cancer between 1945 and 1974. Nearly 20% of the survivors didn’t know what type of cancer they had; 14% said they didn’t even know they had cancer at all and instead recalled a vague, unnamed childhood malady.
Most of the interviewed were truly lucky to be alive. In the 1940s, childhood cancer was overwhelmingly fatal. In the 1960s, five-year survival rates increased to 28%, thanks to extremely high doses of chemotherapy, and then in the 1970s, multi-... Read More
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