Walking for a cure as your treatment ends

Dear Madeline,

In a couple of months, we'll be doing something very special in your honor. As it happens, we will also be doing it after your last round of chemo but before your final treatment evaluation. We will among the many participating in the 2011 Baltimore CureSearch Walk on September 10th. The CureSearch Walk celebrates and honors children whose lives have been effected by childhood cancer, while raising funds for lifesaving research. Money raised by CureSearch for Children's Cancer funds the Children's Oncology Group, the world’s largest, cooperative children’s cancer research entity. The Children’s Oncology Group research has turned children’s cancer from a virtually incurable disease 40 years ago to one with an overall cure rate of 78% today. Their efforts (and those of their predecessor groups) are the reason why kids with Wilms' Tumor (like you) have a 90% chance of being cured. Many years ago, the chances of a cure for Wilms' Tumor patients were less than 50%.

We're walking to raise money for research that literally saves lives, so that all children with cancer may have such tremendous chances for not just mere survival, but for long, healthy, active, and fulfilling lives. We're walking with gratitude for the incredible advances that transformed treatment protocols and all but ensured your survival from the start. We're walking with hope that future research will reduce or eliminate entirely the need to subject childhood cancer patients like you to chemotherapy and radiation treatments, research that could mitigate or prevent the horrible near term and long term effects that may arise from those forms of cancer treatments. We're walking to honor you, and the inspirational fight and resilience you've displayed throughout your treatment.  We're walking to celebrate all who have been cured and to honor those who have lost their battle. We're walking for all of the pediatric oncology patients and families that we've befriended throughout your journey.

This is a big deal to us, Madeline. Our lives were forever changed on February 24, 2011 when Mom rushed you to the emergency room. When the words "cancer" and "oncology" were first uttered to us about 15 hours later, we had no idea what the future would hold. I think society in general has been conditioned to think of a cancer as a brush with death, if not a death sentence in itself. The doctors played everything very straight with us but what they told us about your diagnosis - and the cure rate - gave us tremendous hope, rays of light in our darkest moments. We owe these miracle workers a hefty debt of gratitude, and we have been called upon to lend our efforts to support the search for a cure for all kids with cancer. You'll have no memory of our first walk but I hope that these walks make an impression on you in the future, one that you will call to mind when your set about your life's work.

Love,
   Daddy