You may have seen FHS students handing out yellow ribbons in the hallway, or perhaps were walking behind someone who had a yellow ribbon on their bag. This is because September is Childhood Cancer Awareness month, a month purely dedicated to honor children affected by childhood cancer as well as raise awareness to preventing and curing pediatric cancer.

A few weeks ago, FHS showed their support against childhood cancer at the Franklin Panthers football game against Duxbury. Although the outcome of the game was not what the school wanted, nor was expected, the game served as a larger purpose. Rattle City showed up in all yellow, the color used to represent Childhood Cancer Awareness.

Estimated to be about 10,470 new cases a year, cancer remains the leading cause of death in children from birth to 14 years old. For children, it is most commonly shown in forms of leukemia, brain and central nervous system tumors, and lymphoma. Pantherbook got to talking to Ms. Curtis, a math teacher at our school, who advocated strongly for the theme to be yellow at the football game. Childhood cancer unfortunately affected her daughter Reagan, leaving her and her family’s lives to change forever. 

On July 10, 2020, Reagan was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, a type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow that affects white blood cells. Reagan is now in remission, but if not caught early enough, this cancer can turn fatal extremely quickly. Cancer does not discriminate. One day someone can be healthy playing on the playground, and the next day they can be facing life saving treatments.

So what can we do to help bring awareness to childhood cancer? Wearing yellow and recognizing the month is a start! Ms Curtis also urges everyone to talk to families and patients going through treatment, and obtain all of the knowledge that you can about this disease. Raising money and funds to support families and research is another great way! Connect For Cancer has a lot of great fundraising opportunities to get started, so definitely check them out!

Read about more information on Childhood Cancer, as well as several resources on Cancer.gov