As a father of child who hopefully has beaten cancer, I still hold my breath with every scan that he gets, hoping like hell the results say his tumor "shows no sign of activity". I can not encourage you enough to give to St. Baldrick’s. All parents want the best for their children, we all do, but for some parents, they just want their child to have a fighting chance to live. Most parents would die for their children. Others pray to take their child’s sickness from them so their son or daughter won't have to suffer. If given the chance you would gladly make the switch. Unfortunately, God doesn’t allow you to make that switch. Adults who get cancer can sometimes accept it but how can any one expect a child or expect a parent of a child to accept that kind of diagnosis? We were told that our son Cayden had a 65% survival chance for the cancer that he had. We would tell people and everyone would say that’s great! We would go to the proton center for radiation and there were 2 girls there with Rhabdomyosarcoma like Cayden. One before his radiation treatment and one after. Our families saw each other everyday for just over 4 weeks and we all became very close. The statistics told us that one of our 3 kids would not make it. How great does the sound? Great? How do you accept that 1 out of every 3 children die from the disease your child was just diagnosed with? How did our families get so lucky? By the way, Cayden is the only one of the 3 to survive. I watched my 4 year son be radiated 29 times with his head bolted to a table and get 11 months of chemotherapy. He’d get shots weekly and every third week would have to stay in the hospital with an IV attached to him for 5 days. No child should have to got through what he has. It’s funny, my son looks up to me like most sons look up to their fathers like we're someone special but he’s the fighter. He’s the hero. The National Cancer Institute has a 4.8 BILLION dollar budget of that pediatric cancer research gets 173 million. I did the math, that’s just barely over 3 percent. Explain this. Every parent would die for their child but of every dollar spent on cancer research, the kids only get 3 cents. Why is this? . Research and money for that research is the only way to fight for these kids. Cayden still suffers from many side effects from his chemotherapy and radiation treatment. You have to remember with chemo, you are being poisoned with every treatment. Even if research can reduce the suffering of side effects from these kids treatments, your donation has been put to good use. Your donation no matter how big or small helps that cause. Please support pediatric cancer research by donating. A parent should never have to hear the words "there is nothing more we can do". I would like to leave you with a poem written by a mother of a child with cancer named Carol Baan. I HOPE I hope you never have to hear the words, “Your child has cancer.” I hope you never have to hear, “The prognosis is not good.” I hope you never have to prepare to undergo radiation or chemotherapy, have a port surgically inserted into their chest, be connected to IV poles. I hope you never have your child look at you with fear in their eyes and say “Don’t worry Mommy, everything will be okay” or “Mommy am I going to die?’ I hope you never have to hold your child as they vomit green bile. I hope you never have to feed them ice chips for lunch . I hope your never have to watch the “cure” you pray for slowly take away their identity, as they lose their hair, become skeletal, swell up from steroids, develop severe acne, become barely or unable to walk or move, and then look at you with hope in their eyes and say, “It’s going to be okay, Mommy.” I hope that you never have to stay in the hospital for weeks, months, or years at a time, where there is no privacy, sleeping on a slab, with your face to the wall, where you cry in muffled silence. I hope you never have to see a mother, alone, huddled, in a dark corridor… Crying quietly, after just being told, “There’s nothing more we can do.” I hope you never have to watch a family wander aimlessly, minutes after their child’s body has been removed. I hope you never have to use every bit of energy you have left, with all of this going on around you to remain positive, and the feelings of guilt, sorrow, hope and fear, overwhelm you. I hope you never have to see a child’s head bolted to the table as they receive radiation. I hope you never have to take your child home (grateful but so afraid) in a wheelchair because the chemo and radiation has damaged their muscles, 35 pounds lighter, pale, bald, and scarred. And they look at you with faith in their eyes and say, “It’s going to be okay Mommy.” I hope you never have to face the few friends that have stuck beside you and hear them say, “Thank God that it’s over with,”…because you know it never will be. Your life becomes a whirl of doctors, blood tests and MRI’s and you try to get you life back to “normal”. While living in mind-numbing fear that any one of those tests could result in hearing the dreaded words… “The cancer has returned” or The tumor is growing.” And your friends become even fewer. I hope you never have to experience any of these things…Because…only then… Will you understand… Thank You, Cayden’s Proud Dad.