This is one way cancer kills....slowly destroying her little body parts. This is why cancer is painful."
Seven months ago, Abigail was running around a neuroblastoma warrior, with a head full of hair and disease free. Tonight, Abigail is no doubt in her mothers arms as her mother rocks her back and forth. Her brothers and sister are coping with what their parents have told them is coming and her parents are just trying to cater to Abigail's every wish to keep her happy. Sadly, as is the case in these situations, between the pain and the narcotics, their little girl is already gone in many ways. There is too much pain for her not to be sedated, yet the narcotics cause her to either be asleep or on the rare occasions she is awake, she is easily irritated. Smiles are rarely seen, if ever. Her parents are left to hold her and love her here on earth for days...maybe weeks or at best a couple of months.
So what are you doing tonight? Where are your children? Because in Mesa, Arizona, my friend is rocking her dying child and trying to cherish every moment she has left. Because Abigail is dying and there is nothing on this earth that can change that or fix it. She is dying and her family is left to watch the painful process knowing there is NOTHING they can do to change that.
An innocent, just-turned-four little girl is dying and what the hell are we doing about it? What are we doing to prevent it from happening again and again? I'm embarrassed that I ever even blogged about the idea of being a politician. Politicians aren't helping us fight for childhood cancer like they should. All the politicians I see big and small only seem to be concerned with their bottom line. What happened to the greater good? What happened to working for the people? These politicians who neglect to fight for childhood cancer, who neglect to make it a more important issue aren't any better than pathetic doctors who practice medicine with their egos rather than their hearts and their minds. We need people in mass numbers, we need politicians willing to stand up and we need those doctors like our beloved team in NYC to make a difference. These children do nothing...NOTHING...and yet they are burdened with this horrible disease and often times the slow painful death that accompanies it. Why are people so damn OK with that they they don't do more or fight harder? I'm ashamed to say that before it was my child, I was too naive to know better. I wish there weren't so many people making the same mistake I was making. At the very least, those reading this blog are better off than I use to be because they are at least learning if nothing else. I was just oblivious.
I feel like I have evolved more than normal this past year. I have learned from our experiences with cancer, everyday experiences with a child with special needs, from those who have so graciously helped to support us in our battles, from those that love us and even from those that don't love us. I have gone from considering the idea of wanting to be a politician to being so ashamed of our politicians and our government that I wish George, Clayton and I could pick up and go live one of those "off the grid" life styles in Alaska or somewhere (for obvious reasons we can't). It makes me sick thinking about the fact that as a whole, we are destroying our world and not fighting harder to save our children. We are stuffing our bodies with genetically modified foods and poisoning not just ourselves, but the environment those genetically modified crops are grown in. Did you know they have discovered a direct link between the loss of you thousands of honey bee colonies and genetically modified crops and the pesticides used on them? European countries like France have already banned many of the chemicals and yet we keep on using them? They call this vanishing of the bees, colony collapse disorder...how long before we have our own colony collapse disorder within the human population? Or are we already? How many of your children have severe allergies, weak immune systems or other health problems? How many of us or our children suffer from headaches regularly? How many of our parents have heart disease? High blood pressure? High cholesterol? Diabetes? Obesity? How many of us know somebody who has suffered from cancer? Scientists discovered that the genetically modified crops and their pesticides were causing a reaction in the nervous systems of bees. The nervous system... Neuroblastoma is the most common solid mass childhood cancer and it is a cancer of the nervous system. We don't know that there is a link between the two, but we don't know that there isn't...But links have been proven in the cases of radiation leaks causing cancers, chemical plants and high cancer rates in the surrounding communities. These same links exist between these chemical plants and radiation leaks and a slew of birth defects. So we do know that the chemicals we use today are harmful to us, yet our government isn't regulating it better and we aren't forcing them to do so. We aren't forcing them to find specific links. We aren't forcing them to protect us. In many cases, we aren't even protecting ourselves.
Why are we doing this to ourselves? To our children? To our environment? Why aren't we forcing our government to take action to prevent further damage and start repairing the existing damage? I cannot believe an innocent child would be sent here to suffer and die for no reason. These children are sent here as lessons for us. They are sent here to teach us patience, to teach us to better care for those things we love, to teach us to take care of the world around us and to take care of ourselves. All of these things are gifts; our children, our bodies, our lives, our planet and we are slowly and painfully destroying all of these things and too many of us aren't thinking twice about it. Why?
Why do children like Abigail have to continue to die while the majority of us fail to learn the lessons they are put here to teach us? So many children have genetic mutations causing severe problems...how many of those problems are caused by the toxins our society is producing and surrounding itself with every day? Are we unknowingly making our children sick? There is an awful lot of compelling evidence that says yes...we are. This begs the question, what are we going to do about it?
I know I spend some time on my soapbox, but I am trying to learn whatever lessons these children are here to teach us and I hope that those that read this blog learn something too. Change has to start somewhere.
"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." - The Lorax
