Vincristine was approved by the FDA in 1963. More than sixty years later, it remains a cornerstone of pediatric leukemia treatment—and it was one of the drugs that saved my son's life. This post reflects on the complicated reality of being deeply grateful for a medicine that works while also wondering why so many children are still relying on treatments developed generations ago. It's a story about survival, advocacy, and the hope that the next generation of children will have better options.

One of the questions we hear most often during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month is: Which pediatric cancer research organizations should I support? If you're looking to direct your advocacy dollars toward research, this guide shares several of the foundations our family trusts most, including the organizations funding the next generation of treatments for children with cancer. From St. Baldrick's Foundation to Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation and beyond, these are the groups helping turn today's research into tomorrow's cures.

Finishing treatment is not the end of the medical journey for childhood cancer survivors. Survivorship comes with a new calendar—one filled with follow-up appointments, screenings, and long-term monitoring for the late effects of treatment. In this post, I share what survivorship care looks like for our family, why these appointments matter, and how the reality of lifelong follow-up highlights the urgent need for better, gentler pediatric cancer treatments.

Some advocacy stories begin with frustration. This one begins with hope. In 2017, the FDA approved Kymriah, the first gene therapy for children and young adults with relapsed or refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. For families who once had few options after relapse, it represented something extraordinary: a new way forward. This post reflects on what Kymriah means, why it matters, and why continued investment in pediatric cancer research is how we create the next breakthrough for children still waiting.

Every Maxwell’s Toy Box Joy Package is designed for a child navigating the realities of cancer treatment today. Pop-its, sensory balls, and fidget toys aren’t there by accident—they help children cope with procedures, infusions, and the side effects of treatments that are still incredibly hard on growing bodies. This post explores a simple question: what would our Joy Packages look like if pediatric cancer treatments were gentler, more targeted, and built with today’s science? The answer reveals why supporting children today and funding research for tomorrow are both essential parts of the same mission.

Somewhere between clinic visits, survivorship appointments, and ordinary family life, we became an advocacy family. Not because we planned to, but because once we started learning more about pediatric cancer research, it became impossible to look away. This post is about how that shift happened in our home, the small ways we advocate today, and why advocacy has become one of the places we put our gratitude, grief, and hope for the children who come after ours.

If you've spent any time in the pediatric cancer community, you've probably heard one number repeated over and over: 8%.

That's the widely cited estimate of how much federal cancer research funding is directed toward pediatric cancers. For many families, that number becomes impossible to ignore when they learn that the drugs treating children today were often developed decades ago.

The conversation about 8% isn't really about a percentage. It's about whether children with cancer have access to the research, clinical trials, and treatment innovations they deserve. It's about building a future with better cures, fewer late effects, and more options for families facing a diagnosis.

The good news? Funding levels are not fixed. They are policy decisions. And policy decisions can change.

It's Labor Day, and I've been thinking about a kind of labor that rarely gets recognized: the work of advocacy moms.

These are the mothers who learn the science, write the letters, organize the fundraisers, meet with legislators, support newly diagnosed families, and keep talking about pediatric cancer long after treatment ends. They do it while managing clinic appointments, school pickups, jobs, marriages, and the everyday realities of family life.

Most never planned to become advocates. They became advocates because their child needed them to be.

This Labor Day, I'm thinking about the mothers who have turned their love, fear, and determination into action. The work is often invisible. It is almost always unpaid. And it has helped change the future for children with cancer.

If you've ever wondered what pediatric cancer advocacy looks like, it often starts with something surprisingly simple: a letter.

Every year, Congress helps determine federal research funding, including support for pediatric cancer research. While childhood cancer remains the leading disease-related cause of death in children, pediatric cancers receive only a small portion of overall federal cancer research funding.

This Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, one of the most powerful things you can do is contact your elected officials. Share your story. Ask for increased pediatric cancer research funding. Remind them that today's children deserve treatments that are not only life-saving, but safer and more effective than the ones developed decades ago.

Advocacy does not require a trip to Washington. Sometimes it starts at your kitchen table with an email, a stamp, and a few minutes of your time.

My son is a childhood cancer survivor. We are deeply grateful for that. But survivorship comes with something many parents do not fully understand at diagnosis: late effects.

The chemotherapy drugs that saved his life can also affect his heart, growth, learning, fertility, and overall health years or even decades after treatment ends. That is why survivor families spend years in follow-up care, monitoring not just for relapse, but for the long-term impact of treatment itself.

The goal of pediatric cancer research is not only helping more children survive. It is helping them survive with fewer lifelong consequences. The children in treatment today deserve cures that are both effective and gentler on growing bodies.

I looked something up this week, and I have not stopped thinking about it.

Vincristine, one of the chemotherapy drugs that helped save my son's life, was approved in 1963. More than 60 years later, children with leukemia are still receiving it as part of treatment.

I am grateful for the medicine that gave my son a future. But I cannot stop thinking about the children sitting in infusion chairs today. They deserve the same chance at survival—and they deserve treatments that are newer, gentler, and built on the progress of the last six decades.

That thought has stayed with me all week.

Every Maxwell's Toy Box Joy Package includes sensory toys for a reason.

The pop-it, sensory ball, Slinky, and Play-Doh aren't just there to entertain a child. They're tools that help children cope with procedures, infusions, anxiety, and the side effects of cancer treatment. They help regulate nervous systems that are being asked to endure an enormous amount.

The reality is that many pediatric cancer treatments still rely on chemotherapy drugs developed decades ago. While those medicines save lives, they also bring difficult side effects that children navigate every day in clinic chairs and hospital rooms.

This Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, we're reflecting on the connection between comfort and advocacy: supporting children in treatment today while pushing for better, gentler treatments for the children who come next.

Last spring, I sat at our kitchen table and looked up the development dates of the chemotherapy drugs that saved my son's life.

One by one, the years appeared: 1953. 1955. 1959. 1963. 1974.

Most of the medicines that treated his leukemia were developed before I was born. Some were developed before my parents were born.

The realization stopped me.

We are profoundly grateful for the science that saved our son. Pediatric leukemia survival rates have been transformed by decades of research and medical progress. But sitting with that list of dates raised a question I couldn't shake: if today's children are still relying on chemotherapy drugs developed generations ago, what will it take to build something better?

This September, during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, we're talking about the treatment gap—and why advocacy for better, safer therapies matters for every child who comes after ours.

As families across Chicagoland continue navigating the emotional and financial realities of pediatric cancer, Maxwell’s Toy Box released its 2025 impact snapshot highlighting the growing need for year-round support. The report details how more than 5,000 children across four partner hospitals received Joy Packages, toys, art supplies, and direct family assistance during treatment, while also examining the rising economic strain childhood cancer places on families. It is both a reflection on the hidden realities of pediatric cancer and a commitment to expanding practical support, hospital partnerships, and advocacy in 2026.

If you're reading this from a hospital recliner tonight, this letter is for you.

The IV pump is humming. Your child is sleeping—or trying to. The hallway is quiet in that particular pediatric oncology way. Tomorrow is the start of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, but tonight is just another inpatient night.

From one cancer mom to another, I want you to know this: you are doing enough. Your child knows you're there. The nurses see you. Other cancer parents are sitting in recliners down the hall, awake for many of the same reasons you are.

You do not have to be strong tonight. You only have to get through tonight.

When a child is diagnosed with cancer, communities often rally quickly. The challenge is sustaining that support for the months and years that follow.

The most meaningful help is rarely dramatic. It is the meal that arrives six months later. The neighbor who still mows the lawn. The friend who takes the sibling to soccer every week. The community that remembers treatment is a marathon, not a moment.

If your church, school, sports team, or neighborhood wants to support a cancer family well, this guide shares practical ways to build care that lasts.

A year ago, my son received his last dose of chemotherapy.

I thought the end of treatment would feel like a finish line. Instead, it felt more like the beginning of a different kind of healing.

Over the last twelve months, our family has slowly learned how to live without a clinic calendar running every week. We have rediscovered ordinary Saturdays, bedtime routines, library trips, family dinners, and the simple joy of making plans without checking blood counts first.

Some things have changed dramatically. My son is louder, funnier, and more himself than he has been in years. Our daughter is settling into a childhood that is no longer organized around treatment. My husband and I laugh more. We sleep more. We are learning what life looks like beyond survival mode.

Other things have not changed. Scan anxiety still arrives before appointments. I still notice every bruise. The oncology team's phone numbers are still saved in my contacts. Cancer remains part of our family's story, even as it moves further into the background.

What surprised me most was not the relief. It was the grief. And alongside it, a kind of joy I did not expect. The joy of watching my son climb a tree. The joy of an empty calendar. The joy of realizing that healing is not one moment—it is hundreds of ordinary days stitched together.

If you are entering your first year off treatment, this is what I wish someone had told me: the softening comes slowly. But it comes.

Some of the most important moments at Maxwell's Toy Box are not the big ones. They are not the volunteer events, the fundraising milestones, or the year-end impact reports.

Sometimes they happen in a clinic waiting room.

While waiting for my son's survivorship appointment, I watched a young girl walk into clinic carrying a Maxwell's Toy Box Joy Package. The same bag we packed months earlier at a volunteer night. The same sensory toys, coloring book, and small comforts we carefully chose for a child facing a long day of treatment.

For a moment, the numbers disappeared.

It was not 5,197 children served. It was one child.

Not 4,024 Joy Packages distributed. One Joy Package in one small hand.

As Childhood Cancer Awareness Month approaches, I keep thinking about that moment. Because behind every statistic is a family walking into a clinic. A parent carrying a folder. A child carrying a little bit of comfort.

And sometimes, if you're lucky, you get to see exactly where that comfort lands.

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month (CCAM), a time when the gold ribbon helps shine a brighter light on the realities facing children in cancer treatment and the families who walk beside them.

Awareness matters. Action matters even more.

If you've ever wondered how to help children with cancer in a meaningful way, this guide shares 15 practical ways to make a real impact—from sponsoring a Joy Package or gas card to hosting a toy drive, volunteering, or supporting a hospital toy closet.

Every idea on this list connects directly to children in treatment. No vague awareness campaigns. No abstract gestures. Just tangible ways to bring comfort, play, and support to families navigating pediatric cancer.

Whether your budget is $5, $25, or more, there is a way to help.

And while September is a wonderful month to start, the needs of cancer families continue long after Childhood Cancer Awareness Month ends.

Cancer has a way of revealing who will stay.

Not in a dramatic movie-scene kind of way. More often, it happens through ordinary acts repeated over and over again. A friend who keeps showing up. A friend who remembers the dates. A friend who takes the sibling to the park, waters the plants during an inpatient stay, or sends a simple text that says, "Thinking of you today."

For our family, that person is K.

She was our friend before cancer. Somewhere along the way, she became family.

This post is a thank-you letter to the friend who sat in our kitchen on diagnosis day, loved our children as her own, carried pieces of our life when we could not carry them ourselves, and never once asked for recognition. It is also a tribute to the people who quietly become part of a cancer family's survival story—not because of one grand gesture, but because of a thousand small, faithful ones.

If your family has a person like this, you already know: sometimes the people who aren't related by blood become the family you lean on most.