Good evening. I am honored to be up here, getting a chance to speak to all of you. As members of HOSA Future Health Professionals we go crazy studying and learning as much as we can about medicine. We study and study, but that’s all. We don’t think beyond the medicine. At this point we forget that we’re studying so that we can treat an actual person.

Cancer. The word that starts with “C” and ends with “dead.” Doctors work so hard trying to find a cure for it. We study so that when we grow up we do find a cure for it. We act like we care, but do we really? I want you to take a step back, and forget about the cure. I want you to think about the patient. What they go through. What they deal with. In front of you there are three objects, a toy car, a pill bottle (empty of course), and your self-portrait. If you concentrate, you’ll see something in these 3 things, that you haven’t been able to find in all the books and research papers you’ve tried to commit to memory. So tonight, through the toy car, the pill bottle, and your self-portrait, I want you to take a journey, and truly understand the realities of pediatric cancer.

The first item is a car because you need to understand that cancer is uncontrollable. You don’t choose it. It chooses you. You have no control. You are no longer driving the car. You are the passenger. And the only thing you can do is sit and watch, and hope. You can take the wheel right before your car crashes, and swerve away, but you don’t have the breaks. Your car is going to crash… because you can’t stop it. All you can do is hope; hope that the crash isn’t fatal. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in children behind injuries. Injuries because of something. Injuries because the parents weren’t watching, because the driver wasn’t careful in a neighborhood, because the child ran onto the street after his ball. People make mistakes. Things happen and people die. That’s how everything’s supposed to work. But cancer, it defies all laws. It just happens. There is no black or white. It’s only grey. According to the pediatric cancer foundation, every year in the United States, there are over 104 thousand children diagnosed with cancer. That’s more than a classroom of children a day. Also, according to the pediatric cancer research center, incidents of invasive pediatric cancers are up 29% in the past 20 years. This means that the cancers are getting stronger. Can you imagine what it must be like to not have control over your body, to watch it die right in front your eyes? There’s always this never-ending idea of death in your mind, and you can’t change it.

The second item is a pill bottle. Inside the bottle you shouldn’t see an infinite amount of medical treatments and medicine, but you should see what those treatments do to children. Children tend to respond better to treatments such as chemotherapy or radiation. Fortunately, chemo and radiation don’t cause any pain during the procedures, however the pain and suffering afterward is monumental. The side effects really do take a toll on their health. Vomiting and not being able to keep food down is given with the amount of medicine they have to take. Fevers and a terrible weak immune system is also a given. One thing that many children get is also blood poisoning. Blood poisoning is the presence of microorganisms or toxic matter in the blood, characterized by chills, sweating, fever, and prostration. Getting the chills, the real chills, not the one’s you get when you get you’re every day flu, is painful and scary. You don’t have any control over your body. It shakes and trembles non-stop. It hurts. All the while you’re sweating, and you feel like vomiting. After all the chills, you experience prostration, an abrupt failure of function; complete physical exhaustion, and impairment of normal psychological function. You’re body shuts down. You might be awake but you might as well just be asleep. Everything stops working. And this is fatal. So basically, cancer can cause things to kill you before it completes the job itself. Cancer kills your body. You can’t go to school to learn because if you do, you could die. That’s how terrible your immune system is. So how would you like to live at the hospital all the time, or even be under house arrest? I know I would hate it.

Finally, your self-portrait. We’re all kids here, right? I want you to look at it and picture yourself in a cancer patient’s shoes. It’s hard I know, but try. Picture yourself without hair because remember, you’ve lost it all due to the chemo. There are big bags around your eyes because you’re tired. The pink has been completely drained out of your face because you’re weak with a terrible immune system. Wrap a blanket around yourself as if that’s your layer of protection. Notice you’re alone in the picture. That’s because no one understands what you’re going through. You’re friends have stopped visiting. They can’t put their lives on hold for you while two whole years go by. Now, look at that picture and be grateful for the way you look in it because you just saw yourself looking much worse.

So I don’t want you to stop studying, because what you’re doing is wonderful. What I’m trying to tell you is, put the book down every once in a while and go volunteer at a hospital. You know the realities of pediatric cancer now so why not try and brighten some kid’s day. It’ll only take a few hours. Go walk or raise money. Donate blood all the time, become a bone marrow donor as soon as you turn 18, I know I will. Be amazing and find a cure for cancer because that’s great, but also empathize, and don’t forget that there are actually tiny humans behind the horrifying disease. Never forget about the car, the pill bottle, and your self-portrait.