Today, February 4th is World Cancer Day a day to unite the world’s population in the fight against cancer, to save millions from a preventable death by bringing forth awareness, education and pressing governments and individuals to take action. This May will mark my 3rd year as a cancer survivor and through my experience I want to do everything I can in my power to bring forth awareness, education, prevention and a cure for ALL FORMS OF CANCER.
As you may know for the past 4 years I’ve used my job and my abilities to support St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Why St. Jude? There are many reasons why, just look at what they have done, they have lead the world in childhood cancer research and pushed the survival rate from a death sentence to over 80% in addition they share their research worldwide. what hits home with me is that St. Jude patients do not pay at all…that’s right they pay NOTHING. Sad fact is cancer is an enormous financial burden, it took me two years to pay off my cancer bills and I only had surgery to remove the cancer. St. Jude families-patients do not pay for treatment, for travel or even food, it 100% FREE!!!! In fact, the families don’t even see a bill from St. Jude. Did you know that the majority of insurance plans do NOT cover St. Jude? It’s true most insurance plans will not cover the costs because its “research” so St. Jude doesn’t even receive payout from insurance, they rely on donations and funding from individuals like you and I. The daily operating cost to run St. Jude is at $2 million and 75% of that costs comes from contributions from people like us.
St. Jude is one of those places that you would hope to never have to use but if you did you’d be beyond grateful that it is there. I will never use St. Jude because of cancer I cannot have kids but knowing what I went through, I can’t even begin to understand what it would be like for a child. That’s why I support St. Jude and that is why every summer I run 136 miles from Chicago To Peoria with my teammates.
Today on World Cancer Day I ask you to join me in this fight. You can change your profile pictures, you can share stories but how about you do just a little bit more and make a donation to St. Jude to support what they do have help children all over the world beat cancer? There is no dollar amount too small from $1, to $10 or more, trust me it helps. If I can run from Chicago to Peoria, don’t you think the least you can do is make a small donation?
This year, I dedicate the 2016 run To Reagan Wednesday Kuehn who died at the age of 6 from a rare form of cancer, everything I do this year I do in hopes that we find a cure and we never have to tell a story like Reagan’s again. To read hers go here and then go here www.peoriaruns.stjude.org/irunforreagan to join me in this fight for life. Look at her picture below…this is a story that should never be told, I’ll never be okay with it, please join me.
~Anna Kinkade
