Show your support?

Ah-hem. If you were on Facebook this past Friday, you probably saw some “colorful” conversations. Here’s a synopsis, in brief:

“Purple.”
“Green.”
“Black, of course!”
“Maroon with a pretty pink design.”
“Tan.”
“Beige.”
“Magenta.”

Turns out women of every stripe and hue were posting the color of the bra they were wearing at that moment. A bit of online exhibitionism? Not exactly. Evidently, the game was launched anonymously to raise awareness of breast cancer -- although a good many women didn’t know they were doing that.

Still, the cyber-peek caught on fast, sweeping across Facebook in hours. And at least one foundation did benefit.

The Washington Post got to the heart of the matter in a story that ran yesterday, "Breast cancer awareness goes viral on Facebook":

“It was no game to the people at the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, who were stunned to find themselves the beneficiaries of a Web phenomenon they didn't begin to understand. At the start of Friday, they had exactly 135 fans on their Facebook page. By 5:30 in the evening, they had 135,000.”

Donations to the foundation were up, too.

And it wasn’t just here in the States. Teasing, I posted this on my Facebook status Friday: “Black. What’s the question? ;-)”

Within minutes I had a reply from une amie in Caen, France: “Just to inform you that the question is ‘what color are your underwears’ ... ;-)”

Here’s another story, from The Telegraph in the U.K.: "Facebook 'bra colour' status update craze 'raising breast cancer awareness'."

It seems women everywhere were more than happy to offer a virtual glimpse of their unmentionables for a good cause.

I wish I could come up with something that clever to focus attention on childhood cancers. A lot of money has been raised to fund breast cancer research because grassroots efforts like the Facebook bra reveal have been phenomenal -- and effective.

A year ago I took a science-medical writing class through Johns Hopkins University's master's in writing program, called Medicine in Action. Each week of the semester, a prominent physician or public health expert spoke to us about the specific issues and challenges he or she faces every day.

A gynecological oncologist marveled at the level of organization behind the Race for the Cure, the pink ribbon campaigns, the 3-day walks and all the other efforts benefiting breast cancer research. If only that kind of effort could support all types of cancer, he said, we’d be finding cures faster.

The good news about childhood cancers is that they are rare. The bad news is that without a large population behind it to push for funding and research, childhood cancer isn’t going to get a lot of notice.

Not only is my son David's cancer one that predominately strikes children and young adults, but it’s also a sarcoma. Sarcomas, too, are relatively rare and, therefore, not that popular. As his oncologist David Loeb explained to us, not many researchers want to put the time and money into conducting clinical trials that will help only a small number of patients. So the development of treatments is slow. Add that to the fact that it’s difficult to run large trials when the pool of patients isn’t that deep to begin with.

It’s hard as a parent to realize that, even though your child is getting the best treatment available, that treatment might not be good enough. And one of the reasons it may not be good enough is because there aren’t enough sick kids for it to matter.

Maybe the question for anyone dealing with childhood cancer should be, "What color is your mood?"

My answer would be "blue."

© 2010 by Lorin D. Buck

Swine flu: Will this little piggy go to market?

My son David posted a status update on Facebook shortly after 9 last evening: “AHHH, SWINE FLU AT UD!!! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!”

News crews were staked out in a van beside his dorm at the University of Delaware, he said. I quickly googled “swine flu” and “Delaware” and got a hit at the Philadelphia Inquirer. “U of Del: four students with ‘probable’ swine flu,” the headline read.

Did I panic? No. It was more like, “Here we go again.”

About a year ago, David was diagnosed with embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma, a type of malignant muscle tumor most often seen in young children. For several months, panic became the norm as our family dealt with this rare form of cancer.

Nearly as fearsome as the cancer was the prospect of David catching a cold, the flu or some other viral infection while his immune system was suppressed. Nine months of chemotherapy kept his white blood cell count dipping like the stock market, making him susceptible to invasive germs. The staff at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where David received his treatment, gave us strict orders to head for an ER if his temperature ever reached 100.4 degrees. I’ll not soon forget his oncologist saying, “An infection that you or I would shake off could kill him.”

David had just completed his first round of chemo when his dad, and then I, got sick. Some sort of bug knocked us right off our feet. We each spent two days quarantined in bed, breathing heavily into blue paper surgical masks. For whatever reason -- maybe his counts were still good -- David didn’t catch the bug.

He took a semester off from his studies at UD, spending the summer and fall at home. The downside? He was incredibly bored away from his peers. The upside? Except for the cancer, he stayed well.

David returned to school in February to start the spring semester. Ten days later, his roommate became horribly ill -- high fever, vomiting, hacking cough, muscle aches. David contacted his Hopkins nurse, Susan. She told him to take precautions: wash his hands frequently; wear a mask; and at the first sign of fever, go to the ER for Tamiflu.

Gene and I sweated it out for a week, not knowing how long the incubation period might last. But once again, David did not get sick. The consensus was that his roommate had the flu and because David had gotten a flu shot, he was protected.

Now swine flu seems to have taken a direct flight from Mexico to Newark, Del.

On the one hand, the flu shot won't help against this virus. On the other hand, two months post-treatment, David's immune system has bounced back. Will that be enough to keep him from tangoing with swine flu? I contacted Susan. She recommended David take the same precautions as last time.

Now we wait again. At least this time the entire university is on alert. If David gets sick, he’s sure to receive prompt medical attention. Johns Hopkins also is braced for a potential pandemic, and we can rely on our friends there.

Maybe I've been through so much this past year that it'll take more than flu gone global to put me in a state of panic. I'm really not worried.

Actually, I'm more worried about what David might do with that full box of facemasks sitting in his dorm closet. Aware of how pragmatic and entrepreneurial he can be, I could see him profiting from the pandemic by peddling his masks for “a small fee.”

Now that I think of it, I have boxes of surgical masks and gloves stored in the linen closet upstairs. Hmmm …