{"id":5599,"date":"2015-09-18T10:47:06","date_gmt":"2015-09-18T14:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allenbyparents.com\/blog2\/?p=5599"},"modified":"2015-09-18T10:47:06","modified_gmt":"2015-09-18T14:47:06","slug":"get-gold-spirit-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allenbyparents.com\/blog2\/get-gold-spirit-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Get Gold Spirit Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first Spirit Day at Allenby this year, on <strong>September 25<\/strong>, is &#8220;Get Gold.&#8221; Students are encouraged to wear their gold medals or ribbons, beads, jewelry, or even spray their hair gold in recognition of <strong>Childhood Cancer Awareness Month<\/strong> and in support of an Allenby student and family. Emily Brown, a senior kindergarten student at Allenby, was diagnosed with leukemia last October. Since that diagnosis, Emily and her family have faced so many challenges with courage and a smile. Deborah Potts, Emily&#8217;s mom, recently wrote this blog post about what Childhood Cancer Awareness Month means to her and why we should all care. Let&#8217;s raise awareness about this terrible disease while showing a circle of support around a little girl and her family. After all, spirit comes from joining together to make a difference, not simply by dressing alike.<\/p>\n<p><em>A year ago I didn\u2019t know what this month represented, and in all honesty if I did know that it was Childhood Cancer Awareness month, I am not sure I would have acknowledged it. This is not because I am thoughtless or unkind, but because the thought of a child having cancer was so horrible that I didn\u2019t want to think about it. However, my life changed in October when Emily was diagnosed with Leukemia.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>In the first months of her treatment, we were so focused on Emily and doing everything to make her well that I hadn\u2019t connected much with other Cancer Mom\u2019s or even other Associations and organizations supporting Childhood Cancer. Last week a mother posted about her son Mason on social media in an effort to increase awareness, and her story really affected me. It sent me into a frenzy of research on Childhood Cancer and left me in shock at the statistics and how little money goes to Childhood Cancer research. I am sharing this information with you and have a favour to ask all of you. Please read the facts below and help me increase awareness by supporting Childhood Cancer.<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Presently there are 10,000 children in Canada with Childhood Cancer<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Every year 1700 new cases of Childhood Cancer are diagnosed in Canada<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Only two drugs have been approved for Childhood Cancer treatment since the 40\u2019s.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>In contrast to many of the cancers affecting adults, the causes of cancer in childhood is mostly unknown.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Long term effects of surviving treatments can affect these children&#8217;s\u2019 futures<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Cancer is the #1 disease killing Canadian children today.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>1 in 4 children who are diagnosed with cancer will die of the disease<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Approximately 2\/3 of survivors will suffer late effects from the disease or treatment including sterility and secondary cancers<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>1 in 5 survivors will suffer from Post Traumatic Stress disorder and\/or depression<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Given the life years lost, childhood cancer is drastically underfunded, accounting for only 3-5% of all cancer research funding in Canada.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em><strong>What can you do to help?<\/strong> Awareness is so important. With awareness comes funding, then research and eventually a cure. Please help support Childhood Cancer Awareness by going to social media. Wear gold. Or find a Children\u2019s Cancer organization and donate. For more information go to <a title=\"bigbookofcare.org\" href=\"http:\/\/bigbookofcare.org\">bigbookofcare.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>By Deborah Potts, Mother of Emily Brown<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first Spirit Day at Allenby this year, on September 25, is &#8220;Get Gold.&#8221; Students are encouraged to wear their gold medals or ribbons, beads, jewelry, or even spray their hair gold in recognition of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and in support of an Allenby student and family. Emily Brown, a senior kindergarten student at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[537,536,38],"class_list":["post-5599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-awareness","tag-big-book-of-care","tag-childhood-cancer-awareness","tag-spirit-day"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allenbyparents.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allenbyparents.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allenbyparents.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allenbyparents.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allenbyparents.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.allenbyparents.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5600,"href":"http:\/\/www.allenbyparents.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5599\/revisions\/5600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allenbyparents.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allenbyparents.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allenbyparents.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}