Camp Good Days and Special Times
Posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
Everyone loves to go to summer camp. Nobody likes to get cancer. Cancer sucks.
Going to summer camp if you have or had cancer still rocks. Especially when you get to be outdoors pushing your limits.
I feel very fortunate to have volunteered with Camp Good Days and Special Times for the last 12 years. Camp Good Days provides summer camp opportunities to children, young adults, and adults. I have volunteered with the week-long kid camps for 11 summers.
Camp is great because it is a place where kids living through cancer can just be themselves. If they look different, if they lost a leg, if they are tired … their peers understand. It is a place where you get to be a kid- and people get you. Most campers seem to look forward to camp all year. I know I do.
Camp Good Days personally helped me out also. Six years ago I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease and I underwent chemotherapy and radiation. From volunteering at Camp and watching the kids live a full, adventurous, and loving life that I could also. That was a gift that no amount of volunteer hours and repay.
Cancer is a really big deal. It affects everyone- survivors and their loved ones.
The reality is scary.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. accounting for 23.1 percent of all deaths 559,888 (US Mortality Data 2006. CDC). The leading cause is heart disease at 26 percent.
The 2009 estimated U.S. cancer deaths are 292,540 men and 269,800 women and the estimated cancer diagnosis are 766,130 men and 713,220 women (American Cancer Society, 2009).
That is a heck of a lot of people.
Many people will undergo chemotherapy- liquid hell and radiation- burns. The treatments are tough.
I don’t know how to cure cancer. I’m not that good at science.
I am good at being outside and active. Everyone is.
This spring, I attended the Young Adult Cancer Survivor Weekend. We pushed our boundaries. We faced our fears, not of dying, but of living.
We did the high ropes challenge cheering each other on. We did the zip line. We climbed the climbing wall. And when it rained, we played Wii Bowling. When it kept raining, we went outside and played disc golf in the rain.
Nobody chooses cancer, but we can choose what to do about it.
Everyone has a gift. Share yours.
Postscript:
My mom and aunt both had breast cancer and they went to Camp for a woman’s weekend on Keuka Lake in New York State. It was a great bonding experience for them both. My aunt has since passed away from a relapse and my mom is as I write in the other room in her home recovering from the Whipple Procedure to cut a pancreatic tumor off her pancreas. My father is a prostate cancer survivor. I am a Hodgkin’s disease survivor.
Camp Good Days and Special Times, Inc. is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for children, adults and families whose lives have been touched by cancer and other life challenges. All of the programs and services provided by Camp Good Days are offered free of charge for the participants, which is only possible through the generosity of so many individuals and organizations and the success of our many special fundraising events.
Andy Fleming is an Inspired Mountain Athlete.
Thanks Andy.
This is the real spirit of life and the outdoors.
The Inspired Mountain Athlete program is really about inspiring mountain athletes. Well done to you and Cloudveil.
Thanks Tom for the kind words and support. If you ever have a chance to volunteer for one of these camps it is life changing.
Thank you for doing this. Tristan loved camp and even when he was no longer able to participate in much, he still went and wished it could be longer. He truly lived by your mantra, went to work, and beat quite a bit of the odds…simply amazing everyone with how well he tolerated the treatments….as the record-holder for head radiation at Strong, he still went out and just ripped up the skateparks and everything else he tackled. Many people didn’t even know he had cancer. He wasn’t hiding it; he was just living life the way it needed to be lived. That’s the true secret to beating this beast.