Metastatic liver cancer

Hubby being overseas just sent me a great breast cancer awareness gift: a pink camera! (better than a postcard, mind you…).

Due to the main sponsor of my cancer story blog, I am not allowed to tell you the name of the pink cancer camera, nor a link where it can be found, but the picture is big enough to have an idea

Hubby actually wanted to buy me a pink handphone, but handphones here are cheaper than where he is. I never saw a pink breast cancer awareness camera here, so I am quite happy to have my first camera

Finally I can send hubby pictures back

Please spread the word about breast cancer: early detection is the best road to a successful cancer cure! Get a mammogram screening and be aware that in the month of October, you can most likely find a free mammogram scanning near where you live!

As you know by now: October is breast cancer awareness month.

If you want to know more about breast cancer survivors, and you don’t have time to skim through a vast number of posts about "daily ramblings", then have a go at Jacki’s blog.

The blog is in father’s blogroll under the personal stories and it covers 20 posts over a period of 1 year.

What is most important I find is that Jacki has a healthy sports-body. Since there is no real cure for cancer, the best way to fight it is making sure you are in good shape. Like that you are likely to survive a chemo-therapy as best as possible.

With October being breast cancer awareness month, I was just thinking that this month will reach almost everybody except children.

So I am on a quest to find some cancer awareness games for children and stumbled upon www.makewish.org/ben.

Ben, a kid with cancer made a wish to create a video game that could explain other children what cancer is and most important: what is needed to cure cancer.

Ben always wins

This shows the incredible amount of optimism children have I find. Although Ben explains that he want’s to teach children the good and not so good aspects of curing cancer only. Somehow he is right: what’s the use in teaching somebody he can die, that’s quite universal knowledge.

The cancer game

If you look at the graphics, you can see that it’s quite a sophisticated game, not your 2 cents Pac Man…

Ben says there are 3 key-points in your battle against cancer:

1. health from the hospital,
2. ammo from the pharmacy and
3. attitude, which you get from home

Through the game the players will hit some setbacks : electrified barriers, which makes you lose some attitude. According to Ben, this is pretty much how you can summarize your fight against cancer.

Players move around the game on a skateboard and will come across:

• a fever monster throwing fireballs
• a giant
• evil chickens representing chicken pox
• a robot called Robarf hurling a green gooey mess representing the sickness most children with cancer will face.

Main thing is that each player needs to use up some of their health to destroy the cancer cells, which is pretty much what chemo-therapy is all about.

So if you have a kid with cancer and you are struggling with how to explain cancer and chemotherapy, try the above approach but better still: download the game and see what happens!

There are more children cancer games out there that I will present in a next post.