My favorite four letter word...

As you may know from my previous posts, September is childhood cancer awareness month.

Did you know?

• Each year around 13,500 children are diagnosed with cancer in the US
• One in every 330 Americans develops cancer before the age of twenty.
• On the average, 36 children and adolescents are diagnosed with cancer everyday in the United States (around 46 per school day).
• On the average, one in every four elementary schools has a child with cancer. The average high school has two students who are current or former cancer patients.(Stats thanks to People Against Childhood Cancer)

Rosemarie's awesome!

One of those 13,500 children has a place very close in my heart. She's my niece. Rosemarie was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma at 13 months old. She's five now. She's never been in remission in those four years. There is no known cure for neuroblastoma.

These children are being robbed by this disease. Robbed not only by the hours, days, months, years spent in hospitals, withstanding procedures and terrible side effects - but they're also being robbed of a lifetime of amazing things: robbed of graduations, weddings, vacations, etc. It's really hard work just to keep from dwelling on it all. We're lucky though, we've got Rosemarie, and she's a bright spot in our days.

What can we do? Childhood cancer is so poorly funded. Of every dollar donated to the American Cancer Society less than one cent goes to childhood cancer research (stats here). That's pretty startling. So I'm going to suggest that we all make an effort to try - donate to St. Jude Children's Hospital. St. Jude (you can do so right now by following this link). Even a dollar helps. 

What else can we do? Pray! Please do! Join me in praying for a cure for childhood cancer. As Allie says, "Jesus please help Rosemarie feel better!" 

And lastly I hope you're still with me here. Please eat at Chili's Restaurant tomorrow (Monday sept 26th). The profits made by Chili's Restaurants nationwide on that day will be donated to St. Jude's! You know you've got to eat, so go on and treat yourself, and thank your server for supporting St Jude's too! In four years Chili's has raised over $30 million dollars for St Jude's!

(Rosemarie is the sweetie in the supergirl costume.)