If you’ve followed me for any amount of time, you already know that St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital holds an important place in my heart. My oldest son Josiah is the reason:
In a couple of months, he’ll be turning 13. Many parents of pre-teens will tell you that’s probably a miracle in and of itself, but Josiah is special. When he was just six months old, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
To be honest with you, his diagnosis feels like it was several lifetimes ago. It’s hard to keep track of how much he’s been through between surgeries and physical therapy and chemo and MRIs and feeding tubes and speech therapy and on and on and on. Cancer doesn’t give a rip about what you had planned; when dealing with a tumor, you’re on its turf most of the time.
Josiah made it through. He’s no longer a cancer patient; he’s a cancer survivor.
That’s thanks to the work being done at St. Jude.
When we first arrived, they already had all of his case files from our local children’s hospital. They had a plan to beat his brain tumor, and that’s what they did — without charging my family a single dime for any of it. In fact, in the 12 years we’ve been a St. Jude family, we haven’t paid anything for his care. They saved his life, and they did it without putting financial stress on what was at the time a very young family.
This work is possible thanks to donors from all around the world, and that’s why each September, I talk and write about St. Jude. I can’t help myself; when you’re given such an amazing gift, it must be shared.
This month, you’ll hear about St. Jude across the Relay FM family of podcasts, and from 12-8 PM on September 17, Myke Hurley and I will be co-hosting the third annual Podcastathon for St. Jude on Relay FM’s Twitch channel.
We’ve set our goal for this year’s campaign at $333,333.33, and are already at over $80,000 raised! If you can give anything, I’d love for you to donate to this amazing mission.
As always, thank you.