I've been participating with St. Baldrick's now for 5 years. Over those
years, I've heard a lot of comments (like the one up above), gotten a
lot of questions, and had a lot of fun spreading awareness about
Childhood Cancer. So, I thought I'd take the chance to give a little
background on why I do what I do...
Our Childhood Cancer story started out like many others...namely blissfully ignorant of Childhood Cancer. We were a normal small family with normal small family problems. Then, just before my son Benjamin turned two, I noticed that something was wrong with his eyes. Everybody thought I was crazy, and I couldn't tell you exactly what it was (turns out, it was that his eyes were off center of each other) but I new IT was there.
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| Just a normal little guy |
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About a week before his second birthday, Benjamin developed a bump over his eyelid. It started out as not much, but began to get bigger. Many doctors visits and several wrong diagnoses later, my son still had a bump on his eyelid, but his concerned Pediatrician told me "I don't like the look of this. If he runs a fever in the next few days, take him to the ER."
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| The bump(s) |
Turns out, just as our Dr. feared, something was wrong with Benjamin. Just one week after his second birthday, we took him to the ER for a fever. He had a head CT in the ER and we were told that we would be admitted immediately to MCG Children's hospital. After a whirlwind of tests, we were told that he had two masses in his skull. One of the masses had "eroded the bone and is pressing on the
brain". He also had masses on his spine and his leg. After nearly a week in the hospital, we were finally informed that Benjamin had Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis.
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| Benjamin crashed out after having several diagnostic tests |
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After that, we began to live what Cancer patients call the "New normal". Visits to Oncologists instead of Pediatricians, Chemo, MRI's, ER visits for simple fevers. I won't bore you with all the details, because quite frankly, I'd rather move on from that point in our lives. We were lucky. After only one year, Benjamin recieved his last dose of chemo on October 1, 2010 and was DePorted (had his chemo port removed for you nonchemo people) on June 11, 2011.
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| A Nerf Super Soaker? Awesome!! |
While we loved our new, chemo free life, we new that we needed to help
find a way to end Childhood Cancer so that no other child would have to
go through what Benjamin and his Clinic buddies did. We knew that
although it is a great cause for adult Cancers, Relay for Life donates
far too little of its funds to Childhood Cancer. We also learned that
St. Baldrick's donates all of their funds to Childhood Cancer research,
so it was a natural choice for us.
Our first shave was on August 28, 2011. Over the time of his treatment, Benjamin had developed a love of Nerf guns (what can I say...you can burn a lot of hours in the hospital by shooting those glass doors with suction cup Nerf darts!), so we decided that we would have a Nerf War with our shaving. Ever since then, it has been a tradition that we are proud to continue. All in the name of a great cause...to find a cure for Childhood Cancer!!
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| 2011 Bald and temporary tattoos |
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| 2013 Bald with temporary tattoo |
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| 2014 Mohawked with my boy! |
