Many of you know that September is the childhood cancer awareness month and this week is national deaf awareness week.

I often think about children with cancer, and hope that one day, there will be promising treatments that can cure any type of cancers. Three people I knew from high school had cancer and didn't survive from them after few years of battling. From my perspective, I believe that the government is focusing too much on research on adult cancers than childhood cancers. The government needs to fix their goals- focus equally on adult cancers and childhood cancers. I mean, most chemotherapy treatments doesn't really cure any type of cancers, just to slow the cancers down to give people more time to enjoy their lives. So far, the cancer treatments seem successful for leukemia, and few other type of pediatric cancers. But, so far, I have noticed that the cancer treatments aren't successful for brain tumors, bone cancers, and etc (you can research to see more type of pedatric cancers that doesn't seem successful with the treatments). You know, one of the three people I knew, her dream was that "someday no child will ever have to face cancer" (its her quote that she said since when she was diagnosed with bone cancer at age 11). She was the one who realized that the government wouldn't help childhood cancer research that much, as the government did for the adult cancer research. Therefore, she established a non-profit organization that dedicated to raising awareness and funding research fo pediatric cancer. This organization seems successful so far, ever since 2003. Majority of the children than adults are dying from cancer everyday in every years. So, I hope that you all can donate some money to pediatric cancer foundations for this month and from now on because you can help in a small way for the children to have a chance to live. I often donate money to any cancer foundations and organizations because it's the only way I can help the people who are suffering from the disease in a small way.

In memory of:

VN 06/04/89 to 07/30/07 brain tumor (fought for 10 years)

TM 11/01/91 to 02/22/08 rare type of bone cancer- chrondosarcoma (fought for 5 years)

JS 05/08/89 to 04/16/10 bone cancer- osteosarcoma (fought for 2 years)

This week is national deaf awareness week. I know someone who is very close to me is deaf, and she is determined to prove to others that she can be normal like any of us, except that she can't hear. A lot of hearing people didn't really know that deaf people can feel isolated from the hearing world because they are different from them, and that there is a lack of communication between hearing people and deaf people. Most deaf people now uses hearing aids or cochlear implant, but they had to be trained for a long time to learn to listen to the sounds, get used to the sounds and learn to talk. Deaf people communicate by sign language (the talk of hands, or movement of hands), but if a deaf person is in the hearing world, such as in mainstream school or at work with other hearing people, it is more likely that some hearing people may have discriminate against the deaf people or refuse to provide an interpreter or learn ASL (American Sign Language) in order to communicate with deaf people. I can see that some deaf people feel hurt when being discriminated and often feel left out if they had no idea what the hearing people are talking about. The purpose of national deaf awareness week is to make people aware of ASL and cochlear implant researches and how to support deaf people.

I hope that you all have a good day!