Coping with Childhood Cancer

Childhood Cancer

Kamisaka Sekka, (Japanese, 1866-1942), World of Things: Blue Boy with Bull, ink and watercolor on paper, Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund 1989.85.7 Image courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art

The incidence of childhood cancer may be relatively rare - affecting only about 14 of every 100,000 children in the United States each year - but when it strikes, it can have profound consequences, reaching far beyond patients and family to friends and acquaintances.

Among all age groups, the most common childhood cancers are leukemia, lymphoma, and brain cancer. The diagnosis and treatment of childhood cancers takes time, and there are both short-term and long-term side effects. But today, thanks to medical advances, up to 70% of all children with cancer can be cured.

Sources: Nemours Foundation, American Cancer Society

Coping with Cancer
This list of those affected by cancer can be long and include patients, families, friends, caregivers and classmates. Below are listed some resources designed to help support those whose lives are touched by cancer.

• The Gathering Place is a nonprofit, community-based wellness center in Cleveland, OH serving the social, emotional, physical, and spiritual needs of individuals with cancer and their support network. Programs and services offered by The Gathering Place focus on healing the mind, body, and spirit.
• Stewart's Caring Place, in Akron, OH, offers support and information to families and individuals dealing with cancer.
• For an in-depth article from the American Cancer Society about helping children deal with a diagnosis of cancer in the family, click here.
• Flashes of Hope, founded in 2001 in Cleveland, a nonprofit organization that creates powerful, uplifting photographs of children fighting cancer and other life threatening diseases.
• The Littlest Heros is an organization that improves the lives of Northeast Ohio children living with cancer by providing services that address the social, emotional, spiritual and physical aspects of childhood cancer.

Local Medical and Cancer Care Facilities:

• Akron Children's Hospital
• The Cleveland Clinic
• The Center for Survivors of Childhood Cancer, Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital, University Hospitals of Cleveland
• Hospice of the Western Reserve

Cancer and Childhood Cancer information:

• American Cancer Society
• The Gathering Place: Links Library
• Medline Plus: Cancer in Children
• A Lion in the House Coming to Independent Lens on WVIZ/PBS June 21 and 22, 2006, from 9 - 11 p.m., A Lion in the House offers an unprecedented look at the cancer journeys of five young people and their families over a six-year period. The accompanying website has resources and highlights three major topics - cancer health disparities, survivorship and end of life/bereavement.