Unassuming Woman Turns Force to Be Reckoned With

communityreply@lls.org — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:03:41 GMT

Karrie Munkittrick was, in her own words, reserved and unassuming - an artist, wife and mother of two healthy daughters. Then a single event turned her into a one-woman army. Her enemy? Leukemia. Not just any leukemia, but leukemia that attacked her tiny, two-month old nephew, Austin. The entire, extended family pitched in to support Austin, doing whatever they could, and sometimes just being there with him and giving his parents breathing room and time to spend with his big brother, Hunter. But when she wasn't helping in that way, Karrie started thinking about ways to help find cures.

She found a way - Light The Night Walk. Her initial Walk reinforced her belief that Light The Night Walk was a great way to support LLS in the search for cures. The following year, Karrie became a team captain, getting people to join the "Austin's Warriors" Light The Night team. She explains that asking people to donate money would normally have been difficult for her; but knowing that the money raised would help find cures for leukemia she became a dynamic fundraiser. As a team captain, she raised funds herself and acted as a rallying force, urging on her team, which raised more than $6,300 in 2009!

This year, she found another way to help. As her husband Michael explains, "She's been a light to so many people and it has changed her. Now she wants to go where few people would ever consider going." Karrie is very pretty, both inside and out, and has long, beautiful hair. She decided to shave her head as a participant in LLS's Totally Baldacious campaign, in which people raise funds by shaving their heads to show support and solidarity for patients who lose their hair during cancer treatments.

If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with a blood cancer, LLS is here for you:
To speak to an information specialist, call (800) 955-4572, chat online at www.lls.org, or email infocenter@LLS.org.
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Support the fight against blood cancers with a gift to LLS.

From Dr. Barton Kamen: Be Your Child's Best Advocate

communityreply@lls.org — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:26:34 GMT

The following is from our Chief Medical Officer, Barton Kamen, M.D., Ph.D.

Cancer … What a frightening word for anyone to hear, especially a parent! There are about 10,000 new cases of cancer in children under age 15 in the United States each year.. This is less then 1% of all cancers diagnosed annually in our country. Even so, that is not a consolation for you as a parent because no child is a statistic. In the more than 30 years that I have been a pediatric oncologist great progress has been made in treating children. In fact, the majority of children can be cured and today some treatment plans are designed to minimize treatment, hopefully without decreasing the cure rate. The goal is to eliminate or at least minimize the long term or late effects of treatment.

When we say cancer, we really mean CANCERS─plural. Unlike adults, in whom the common cancers are of breast, colon, lung and prostate, childhood cancers are predominantly two related diseases, leukemia and lymphoma, followed by brain tumors. In fact approximately 40% of all pediatric cancers are blood and related diseases, and about 20% are brain tumors.

Much of the progress in treating children with cancer is at least in part due to the fact that the pediatric oncology specialists around the world have worked together in cooperative groups so that large clinical trials could be done. Since, fortunately, the total number of patients is relatively small, this cooperation has allowed information about the diseases and the treatments to be collected and then used to formulate better treatment plans.

The majority of pediatric patients in this country are treated in centers that have established teams of professionals: physicians (including hematologists, oncologists, radiotherapists and surgeons), nurses, social workers, psychologists, child life specialists and teachers. This is to insure the best care for the child and family, which means that we are not simply treating a disease. I have always made a point with students and residents that we treat people not diseases, and in our case, we treat children. That means we also have to provide support and guidance to siblings and parents.

Yes, cancer is a horrific, scary word to hear, but I am glad it is 2008 and not decades earlier, when I started. No matter what type of cancer you or your child have─whether it is a disease with an outstanding record of successful treatment, or one of the more difficult to treat types of cancer─I suggest that you have your treatment at a center in which there is a whole team available to assist you on the journey. And that this team is associated with an even larger team. For difficult to treat cancers, there is often a clinical trial that is an option for you or your child. My advice to any parent, even though I do not like to be called a healthcare provider and do not consider my patients to be customers, is: You should be your child’s best advocate and as a consumer, ask questions and get as much information as you want. There is no such question as a bad question. And usually, for most questions about serious illness, your imagination about what is happening is often worse then the reality.

Learn more about childhood leukemia and lymphoma.

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Blog

Unassuming Woman Turns Force to Be Reckoned With

From Dr. Barton Kamen: Be Your Child's Best Advocate