What Will You Do?

Awareness.  In the world of childhood cancer, Awareness is the buzz word in September, as it is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.  #gogold #curechildhoodcancer and hashtags like those fill my twitter timeline and my facebook newsfeed.  My profile picture is a call to go gold.  My posts are often pictures or memes that draw attention to the too often forgotten warriors battling this horrid disease.  We need more awareness.

But in my personal world, there is no lack of awareness.  Instead there is hyper-awareness.  Rarely a moment passes where I do not think, in the front of my mind, or the back, about childhood cancer.  It is a reality of a parent of a child with cancer.

I find myself, sitting in a meeting, awakening from a momentary daze.  In my mind is an image of a CT scan, or a bag of blood being transfused, or a bald head poking out of a pile of blankets in a hospital bed.  It varies, but inevitably I find myself looking at someone, a coworker, not processing a word being said.  I try to hide my momentary lapse, quickly listening to the last half of a sentence and attempting to guess what they might have said while I was away.

I can't escape it.  Awareness follows me.  I go to work.  I talk to people about what should be (and otherwise would be) meaningful topics, attempting to escape the reality.  But inevitably, eventually, the awareness returns.  I wonder about her blood counts.  I contemplate the choices to be made. Occasionally, in a moment of weakness, I even picture a small casket, or what it might feel like to have someone so precious leave this world in my arms, with me helpless to do anything about it.

Then I shake my head, attempting to throw such a morbid and unthinkable thought from my head.

So yes, we need more awareness.  We need more people awakening to find themselves picturing a small bald head and beautiful eyes staring at them.  We need more people contemplating "what if" about their own child.

But awareness alone is useless.  Awareness alone is wasted emotional energy.  If awareness comes and is allowed to pass, it is futile.  

What is needed is action.  Awareness does not provide a hat for a bald head in the winter.  Action does. Awareness does not give a family, out of money but not out of the woods, a place to sleep while their child is in a hospital is a far away city.  Action does.  Awareness does not fund critical research to provide new options for treatment (current options being decades old).  Action does.

Awareness is wonderful, and I thank all those who help to spread awareness - but I beg you - do not just be aware.  Take action.  Run or walk in an athletic event.  Purchase a t-shirt.  Donate $10, $100, $1,000 - whatever you can afford - to a non-profit like Pablove, St. Baldrick's, The Jeff Gordon Children's Foundation or (in Louisville) Gilda's Club.  Volunteer at a children's hospital.  Cook a meal for an impacted family.

Speak not with words.  Speak with action.  And bring awareness not just for knowledge, but to drive others to DO SOMETHING.

Whatever it is, however big, however small - Take Action.  

Make September Childhood Cancer ACTION Month.  

What will you do?