September

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. I've made a few observations. First, Everyone seems to know the color pink represents Breast Cancer Awareness, which is the month of October, but did you all know that gold is the color that represents childhood cancer awareness? I'm fond of saying "Go Gold in September!" Childhood cancer awareness has been a soapbox of mine for the last 4 1/2 years. Ever since it hit a little too close to home. Back in 2009, I had just become a parent for the first time. Childhood anything had been as far off my radar as it could possibly be, especially cancer, until then. My baby boy was healthy, but when he was 6 months old, our little cousin who was 3 at the time began having symptoms that something wasn't right. after several trips to the ER, they discovered a mass in her brain. It turned out to be a tumor. Anaplastic Ependymoma to be exact. If you're anything like me, you just said "Anna-who???" Well, turns out, Ependymomas like my cousin's are the third most common brain tumors in children, and there are over 28,000 children with brain tumor diagnoses in the U.S. What a scary thing to hear for someone who had just become a parent. All of a sudden childhood cancer was very real and very close to home. Ever since then, it's been a mission of mine to raise awareness for childhood cancer. I can just hear you asking "why do we need awareness?" Well, because childhood cancer research is drastically underfunded in comparison to cancers that typically affect adults. In the last 20 years, only one drug has been approved by the FDA that specifically targets childhood cancer. It is a drug for Lymphoblastic Leukemia. That's only one type of cancer that affects children. In one year alone (2012) the FDA approved twenty-three drugs that target adults. Surely we can do better than that! Childhood cancer gets less than 4% of funds raised in large cancer research organizations. We can SERIOUSLY do better than that!!! Red Tail Crochet has taken action. This month I will be offering a couple items especially to raise awareness about childhood cancer. The proceeds from these items will go to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital to help fund the vital research they do into various forms of childhood cancer. In fact, they have been researching a specialized treatment for Anaplastic Ependymoma and are currently running a trial, which is working for my cousin. She is now 7 and is the most amazing, beautiful, and courageous girl I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. I am taking action in hopes that someday very very soon, all kids like my cousin who fight this terrible disease will have access to a cure!

This is the Childhood Cancer Awareness Month Scarf. It is black and very soft and cozy. At each end is gold ribbon symbolizing Childhood Cancer Awareness. It is $45. If you are interested in purchasing this scarf head on over to my Etsy store and grab before it's gone!! http://www.etsy.com/shop/RedTailCrochet?ref=search_shop_redirect