September is Blood Cancer Awareness Month

I chuckled when I learned September was Blood Cancer Awareness month. Believe me, those of us with blood cancer are very aware — not just in September — but every moment of our lives. We are aware each time we see lymph nodes swollen on our necks or feel them in our groin or under our arms, when an ugly bruise appears and stays for  months, at every tiny mosquito bite that doesn't heal, when a miniscule paper cut bleeds and bleeds and bleeds, and every sneeze threatens to lead to pneumonia and death. We are aware when the night-time pains shoot through our bones. We are aware as we fight cancer's attack of our bodies and satan's attack of our minds.

We are aware.

Are you aware:

According to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in the United States in 2019 approximately

 every three minutes one person is diagnosed with blood cancer,

176,200 people are expected to be diagnosed with blood cancer,

ten percent of new cancer cases diagnoses will be blood cancer,

1,3999,180 people are living with blood cancer,

Approximately every nine minutes someone dies of blood cancer,

156 people die each day from blood cancer,

six people die each hour,

56,770 people will die this year,

9.4 percent of cancer deaths this year will be from blood cancer.

I thank God  and prayers, and cancer research that with treatment and a daily targeted therapy pill, most of the symptoms I experienced in the first paragraph are gone. I now live a healthy and happy life. Thank you for your prayers for me. Please keep praying for all cancer patients every day and month of the year. They suffer. They endure. They conquer thanks to your prayers.

My cancer care costs approximately $350,000 a year. Thanks to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and other grants, I am not hit with that financial burden. Won't you consider donating for cancer research and funding for grants to help patients like me? You can donate at www.lls.org.  Thank you. 

I was thinking of the money spent on Halloween candy. Perhaps giving the same amount  to www.lls.org will free children with leukemia from the fright of cancer.

To encourage cancer patients, I share the lessons God taught me on my cancer journey in my book Praise the Lord and Pass the Chemo: A Hopeful Response to a Hard Reality. Do you know a cancer patient who needs encouraged? Available on this website, Amazon, and Walmart.

Splashes of Serenity to all my fellow cancer warriors and thank you again to all who prayed for my healing. God heard. God healed!  Praise the Lord!!!