Today was our 9th yearly Kids With Cancer Christmas party at WEM where all families on and off treatment are welcome to attend. This includes a 2 hour pass to Galaxyland, lunch, Shriners, Eskies and Santa / Mrs. Claus (with gifts for all cancer kids and their siblings).
Its hard to believe that 9 years have passed since Kalis diagnosis. This christmas party was a blessing in our bleak world and to this day the kids still look forward to this occasion.
Families get a chance to reconnect, we watch survivors grow into healthy teens and tweens, and cancer kids feel normal in this environment. No awkward silences or glances, no meaningless conversation (to save a difficult moment), no fluff, no pussyfooting - just reality in its purest form. Parents talk, children don't have to because they understand what each other is going through so they just play. It's beautiful and sad at the same time.
In this room we witness hope as we bear witness to these miraculous survivors.
Then, after time passes we realize how many have been affected by treatment, how many
relapses, and those that are missing....
We realize the increasing number of hidden broken marriages. Yet, on this day we still play and we celebrate the ones that are among us.
It's very difficult to attend these functions, yet we all gravitate to it. We need each other. Most of us have lost close friends and family members (due to the harsh reality of our situation) during the darkest period of our lives, so we reach out to each other for comfort and support. We have developed life long bonds that both serve as support systems, and unfortunately reminders.
The Hair Massacure supported Kids With Cancer Society for four years and raised awareness and hundreds of thousands of dollars for family support programs. This felt very rewarding at the time, however we still realized that we were not getting to the root of the problem. There were far too many young funerals and this motivated us to switch over to a research program at the Stollery. KWC now has a late terms effects program which helps children like Kali off treatment, however we chose to stay with what we started at Stollery. I would like to believe that perhaps someday a miraculous new treatment will be discovered there as a result of the thousands of pink heads that have supported our cause.
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