I Hate Cancer

I hate cancer, but I love the families we work with at camp whose lives are impacted by it. Instead of building a wall to impress the world with his genius, couldn't our president and his congress put money toward finding better treatments for brain tumors in our most vulnerable children?

Mule, one of our long time camp counselors at Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times, recently posted this on his face book page: 



We need to do better than this. 

Currently, our methods for dealing with tumors are slash, burn and poison. The discombobulation in the wake of these treatments is devastating. Members of our camp population suffer from loss of sight, balance, sensation, mobility, speech, immune function, and ability to socialize, among other losses, due to side effects. 

The losses endured by siblings also take an emotional toll. Parents do the very best they can. Medicine is doing the best it can, but we're creating more cancer in children than ever before.

Cancer is an equal opportunity destroyer. It cuts across all ethnic, racial, religious, age and gender lines. There are more cases in areas where pesticides are concentrated, and in areas where water and air quality are poor. So, there is an economic component that is skewed. 

In 1984 Juana Gutierrez started organizing Mothers of East Los Angeles to fight against the smoke stacks being built in their neighborhoods for the purpose of burning toxic waste. The good that these women have done and are doing for their families is astonishing and a simple example of how impactful we can be when we stand together against the idiocy of pretending that this planet is not our only life boat in the inhospitable ocean of outer space.  For more about their struggle and triumph click this Living On Earth transcript.

http://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=93-P13-00015&segmentID=5

I propose we confer with our inner space (hearts and minds) to see what we might do in our own households and neighborhoods to clean up the toxins. 

Could we pre-cycle to diminish the size of our individual carbon footprints? That means purchasing items packaged in less plastic or buying items in bulk, and instead of carrying them home in plastic bags, re-purposing our glass jars from spaghetti sauce and canned fruit, or mayonnaise to store grains, pasta, dried fruits, cereals and the like. Getting the plastic out of the waste stream will support cleaner air and water. Many stores are coming on board to support us bringing our own containers to fill with the groceries we purchase from bulk bins. Every scrap of plastic we don't buy is one less scrap in the land-fill... which drains to the water table.

If Harvey and Irma teach us anything about how everything ends up in the water, we should heed the teaching and cut down on the chemical load we're dumping into our own nest.

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It was a brilliant weekend at Jack's Camp in Livermore, California. We Can has merged with Pediatric Brain Tumor Network. Camp is the same, the name has changed. Cool weather and blue skies prevailed. Stage Night, which we call We Can Do ANYthing, showed off the many and varied talents of our campers age 2 to 22. Dancing, singing, lip-syncing, magic tricks, and jokes delighted us all. One sixteen year old showed off walking across the stage without his crutches. After Stage Night came the dance party. Wow! This was the most cohesive celebration I've ever witnessed at camp. EVERYone was dancing! The music was at a doable volume; the kids, their adults, and all twenty-five volunteer counselors danced and danced. We decorated wheel chairs and ourselves with glow-sticks and light-up rings and enjoyed "YMCA" and "Electric Slide" on wheels and on foot. 

Good-byes Sunday afternoon were tearful. No one wants to leave the haven of safety we've created together - where the break-out groups help  patients, siblings and parents bond with their peers.

There's no place on earth like camp. It's not the place, it's the people.

Love people. Hate cancer.