Shave for the Brave!
After all, it's ONLY HAIR!
Who's willing to Cowboy up and put your Big Girl Panties on to shave your head for kids with Cancer?
Ruby is still in treatment with daily chemo nearly two years after diagnosis and handling it with more strength and courage than I ever thought possible from a 4 year old. We have tried to hold firm to our principle of “getting better” not “being sick”. We tell her that her blood is sick, not that she is sick because we don’t believe that it is healthy for her to identify as a “sick kid”. Cancer is already robbed her of so much of her childhood. We want her to feel as normal as possible, even though she has a tube hanging out of her chest, has to be super vigilant about germs, has frequent trips to the oncology clinic that give her pain in her bones so terrible that I cannot hold her to console her. She doesn’t understand that when she wakes up in the recovery room she has been given poison in her spine that will make it difficult to walk or complete sentences. But she has an amazing spirit and infectious joy, despite the collateral damage that treatment brings. She is my hero and greatest teacher, and I have immense gratitude for that and for the care she gets that is saving her life.
I wake up at night to watch the rise and fall of her chest, or to put my hand to her forehead to check for fever, and wish so hard that I could take the cancer away.
I cannot take her cancer away, but we are going to fight, and fight hard for her and everyone else this disease touches. You can step up to join the fight.
People like you could making a difference helping fighters and survivors like Ruby. Thanks in large part to St Baldrick's, amazing strides have been made advancing science and technology so kids like Ruby and so many other very special loved ones with blood cancers have a very positive prognosis.
Our hope is that one day we will not have to watch our loved ones battle blood cancer, and that the cure does come at such a cost to quality of life.
Your efforts are part of the possibility. Be a hero.