Seeing a child suffering with cancer is every family’s worst nightmare. Because of this, September has become the designated Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Organizations all over the world hold events and raise money in order to support children struggling with cancer. Gold ribbons are put on display in business windows, showing support of childhood cancer. Ripon High has shown our support through a gold-out dress-up day last Wednesday, 9/27 and gold dress-ups at various sports games.
With leukemias being the leading childhood cancer, it is estimated that about 1 in 285 children will develop cancer before turning 20. Causes of cancer in children can vary, but most commonly, mutations in genes which lead to out of control cell growth and then cancer is the most common cause.
In 1990, in a presidential proclamation, George W. Bush. introduced Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Around 2003, Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Foundation (CCCF) member, Gigi Thorsen chose the gold ribbon to be the universal symbol for childhood cancer awareness. The gold ribbon was chosen because gold is a precious metal just as children are precious in many people’s lives.
In fact, one of our fellow RHS students has been battling cancer since 2017. Senior, Mason Ferulli has been battling Anaplastic Recurrent/metastatic Ependymoma, which is an extremely rare type of brain and spinal cord cancer, for 6 years. Within those 6 years, Mason has gone through multiple surgeries, treatments, and procedures, however, because of the 50% recurrence rate of this type of cancer, the cancer keeps coming back. Recently, Mason has tried a treatment, which has not yet been approved by the FDA, called stem cell therapy which injects new cells into his body which will then fight off the bad ones. Currently, only 4% of federal research funding goes to childhood cancer, meaning that there are only 4 new drugs that have been approved by the FDA over the last 20 years. Please continue to pray for Mason and all the other children and teens out there who are also battling this awful disease!
