Cancer Kids = TV Gold?

Cancer, how romantic! Doesn’t everyone want cancer? No?? Didn’t you love that movie about it? What about the new TV show with the cancer kids? Didn’t you read that funny, sexy book about the girl and guy who both had cancer? Isn’t cancer so super in style right now? Well, all these shows and books sure make it seem that way.

That’s right folks, cancer is hip. Young, pretty, cheekboney, fancy hat-wearing cancer: where you always have a boyfriend,  you aren’t really THAT sick, and all your friends come to visit you, showering you with attention. Doesn’t that sound like fun? Never: throwing up all the time-cancer, face and body all puffy because you are so bloated from the meds, surgeries, spinal taps, bone marrow transplants, spending so much time in the hospital your friends get tired of showing up- cancer. Oh man, but that sounds more like the depressing kind of “sick” and that’s more of a bummer….. We like seeing the attractive, uplifting, hopeful kind of sick people who are more like saints than sick.

Sounds pretty silly when you say out loud, huh? Even though these stories are all fictional and can bring some amount of awareness, it’s really important to remember: THEY. AREN’T. REAL.

A REAL story is my friend Chris who is fighting Leukemia for the second time in his 14-year-old life. He was just a little kid the first time he went into remission and fought long and hard back then when they celebrated his survival. At 13 doctors told him his monster had returned with another 3 years of treatments. THREE MORE YEARS!!! He has been nearly living in the hospital with REALLY not fun and definitely sick-making, often painful treatments, sometimes surgery, missing his freshman year of high school: Cancer.  His parents are in it with him for the ride. Chris is a dope guy and would definitely be a STAR in his own blockbuster movie, but we don’t want the movie to be about cancer!

Any of us can only really imagine what that would be like growing up. What were you doing when you were 14?

I’m guessing it isn’t like summer camp as portrayed on a recent TV show. And it’s probably not like making a wish so outrageous you can fly out of the country with your funny sexy cancer girlfriend like in a popular book/movie.

This month is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. If you want to do something to help Chris, it would mean so much to him and to his family if you just Like his Facebook page Christopher’s Crusade. And if you do, you can ask Chris what he thinks of these shows and movies, too.

Share what you think of modern cancer fiction in the comments section. How do you think it effects our awareness?