Why it's Time for a Childhood Cancer Awareness Stamp

When my three-year-old son was diagnosed with cancer, no one believed it. He was healthy and energetic, running around the house with his snow-white blond hair and sparkling blue eyes. How could he be sick? Perhaps there really wasn't a small blue-cell tumor growing in his neck.

The truth is, most of us don't want to think about children with cancer. Childhood is supposed to be a time of innocence--playing ball, blowing bubbles, eating Happy Meals, and cuddling up with a book as mom or dad reads.

There are facts available about childhood cancer and with easy access to the Internet, all you have to do is click and learn. Perhaps people need to be educated in order to realize the harsh reality--children suffer and die from cancer.

1. Childhood cancer is the number one killer of our nation's most precious resource: our children.

2. Childhood Cancer results in 30 times more pediatric deaths than Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in the United States.

3. Childhood Cancer kills more children in the United States than AIDS, asthma, diabetes and cystic fibrosis combined.

4. Approximately 12,400 children will be diagnosed with cancer this year. This works out to 1.4 children per hour and almost 34 children per day!

5. One out of every 330 American children will carry the diagnosis of cancer by the age of 20.

6. Approximately 2,300 American children lose their battle to cancer every year. (Facts from Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Foundation.)

In addition, cancer affects the whole family. As the founder of Courageous Kidz, Debby Stephenson says, "The child has the disease, the family has the cancer." Families have been torn apart, and suffered financially and psychologically as the years wear on with caring for a diagnosed child. Some children's protocols require over two years of chemotherapy. And even after the cancer is gone, heart, neurological, and other health problems occur.

And yes, like my son, children lose their battle and die. There is nothing more devastating for a parent than watching her child die.

There is no doubt that childhood cancer awareness has a widespread national appeal and significance. How helpful it would be to continually remind people of the need to turn toward cancer awareness and not away from it by having a commemorative (first class) childhood cancer stamp.

What will the stamp accomplish for children with cancer? Look at this fact: The breast cancer stamp has raised over $25 million for breast cancer research.

Although a petition to issue a childhood cancer awareness stamp has been signed and one US senator has been working on legislatively mandating this stamp, years continue to pass, and no stamp has been issued.

How much longer, and what will it take to wake America up? Hospitals wards are filled with kids with cancer, the disease isn't going away. It is time to make our country aware in a new way.