The Answer

When you seek your destiny the universe conspires to assist. I believe that and knew that if I waited, the answer would just come. And so I think it has. Columbia, and in fact, the whole world, needs a system of integrated Cancer Centers. A place where people go to get support--whether it is information, financial, or especially emotional. I think when the idea comes to it's true fruition, it will be a physical place, but for now, a network of support groups would be a good place to start.

We had the privilege last week of attending a tailgate and the MU game for Childhood Cancer Awareness Days. It was a small group--it was raining--but it was very comfortable to be in a crowd of people who all "got it." To see kids in the battle, graduates, nurses, doctors, and everyone else all there for the same reason meant we didn't have to talk about it, or explain, but we could just have fun. But the whole time my thoughts were on the family of a friend who has had to contend with the loss of a father to cancer, a sudden death of a grandfather, and the loss of a pigeon and a dog, all in a span of about two months.

The one thought that kept resonating in my head, though was that Bonnie's beautiful daughter made her go get a mammogram because she did not want to lose two parents to cancer. How powerful is that? How scary is it for anyone to know that they could lose everyone to the same dreaded cause? It's possible, but we don't think that way. We could have lost a son this summer to cancer, not something I ever thought of even on my most dreary day. Car accident, freak baseball or pool accident, even choking, but not cancer at the age of ten. But kids who lose someone to cancer might fear it forever, and people shouldn't have to live in fear.

So we have to take the power away. Cancer is fast becoming more chronic in many of it's forms. There have been great advances in breast cancer, certain kinds of melanoma, leukemia, etc. Not enough, I would never argue that, but CANCER doesn't have to carry the same power it did even ten years ago. But when I started thinking about it, about all the people who told me their stories and told me that my blog is therapeutic--I thought, how is it that there isn't an organized network of support for all the people touched by cancer? By doing that, and sharing the wealth of information and giving people a place to go, first virtual, then hopefully real physical places, everywhere, like Ronald McDonald Houses for cancer, we can take the negative energy associated with cancer and turn it into a positive force of hope.

That's the plan, feedback is good, volunteers are great, and a NAME would be wonderful. My first thought that grew out of thinking about Bonnie's daughter was that people who take this journey need to know that they will NEVER BE ALONE, but there are lot's of organizations with names like that. I also thought about hope and that if we want to have support groups for kids, and we want people to think good thoughts about this place, it needs to have a more inspirational name. I thought about Hope House, Hope's Place, but those names are also overused. My current thinking is that in the spirit of The Vagina Monologues, we should just call it The Cancer Club because that's what it is and it begins the process of stealing the power. It may be a Club no one ever wanted to join, but the reality is that we are all already members--by virtue of being touched by the condition, you could benefit from the service we might offer.

But anyway, I am so incredibly busy, the store is busy and everything in our house seems to be breaking at the same time, so I am spending a lot of time at Lowe's. Plus, school year activities are in full swing--orchestra, Robotics, a new competitive basketball team for Bo, confirmation for Pierce, all has me drowning in paper and events! I need to make many more posts, but I wanted to put that thought out to get some feedback, and to help us with our first goal.

If anyone in the Columbia area knows any kids (perhaps, 8-12 or 13) who have recently lost a parent to cancer who might be interested in getting together with other kids in a similar situation for support, and even some fun, let me know ASAP. You can e-mail me at lwscribner, or call--I am at the store most of the time, 573.446.1823. We have trained psychologists and social workers that have agreed to help us, and we hope to expand to offer more groups, so if you have thoughts on that, let me know that as well. That's all for now, but we are really excited about this project and hope you are, too! With love, Lisa