September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. No one realizes or acknowledges the month because we are already preparing to go Pink for Breast Cancer Awareness month in October and it doesn’t even cross our minds. There is no special celebration or little gold ribbons on packaging or clothing to commemorate the month. Still, every three minutes a family will be told “your child has cancer” within this month alone. It is crazy to think that even though cancer remains to be the #1 leading cause of death by disease for children in America, it still doesn’t get the recognition or awareness it deserves when it affects people our age. 

No one understands the reality of cancer and what it could do to someone, especially a child. Yes, we want to look away and not imagine a child enduring that pain but it happens. Close to 1 in 285 children in the U.S. will be diagnosed with cancer before their 20th birthday. We as a society know how to check for the signs of breast cancer, look for lumps, make sure to have an examination every other year, and know the signs. Do we know the signs of cancer in children? Do we know how to recognize that headaches, poor appetite, and bloody noses are all signs of cancer in a child?

Children with this disease deserve to be celebrated and acknowledged as well as the families who go through the battle with them. All types of cancers are important and deserve to have the same awareness and recognition. This could be affecting anyone of us and we wouldn’t even know it. Any parent, sibling, or child who has gone through cancer and continues to know that tomorrow isn’t promised. There is only today. Allow yourself to cherish the small victories.