Erin's Letter

February 29, 2008--Second Post Today

I don't know if it's the unusual date (Leap Day) or the spectacular number of visitors to the site today (WELCOME SARAH SMITH FANS AND THANK YOU FOR STOPPING BY OUR CORNER OF THE INTERNET), but I was moved to post again. This time with the letter Erin has been working on for her senator:

Dear Senator Hutchinson,

My name is Erin Buenger. I am 10 years old and live in Bryan,
Texas. I am a happy and energetic girl. I play soccer and piano and
sing in the choir. I am on the Student Council at my school, and I
recently set the school endurance record for jumping rope. I
have met former President George Bush and Barbara Bush, Senator John
Cornyn, and my Representative Chet Edwards. My dream when I grow up
is work for the government as a Congresswoman, as President or maybe
both. Also one more fact about me is that I have cancer.

You may not know much about cancer in kids like me. Cancer kills
more kids than any thing else. It kills more kids in the US than
cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, asthma, and AIDS combined. In
fact every sixteen hours a child with my kind of cancer,
neuroblastoma, dies. Think about how many kids that is! I do not
know the exact number, but it is a lot.

When I was first diagnosed with neuroblastoma, I was five years
old. I was in the hospital for 75 of the first 150 days I was in
treatment. That sounds like a lot, but compared to other kids with
neuroblastoma, I was pretty lucky. By the time first grade rolled
around, I was as good as new and growing hair. I'd like to tell you
that everything turned out great, but it didn't. I relapsed when I
was in the second grade. Talk about a bad way to spend spring
break. Finding out you have cancer again is pretty bad. (My parents
didn't tell me at the time, but now I know that relapsed
neuroblastoma has no known cure. I'm hoping that doctors and
scientists can discover something to change that.).

I am writing to you so that you will know first hand about a kid
with cancer. Since you are my Senator, I figured you would want to
know, so that you could vote for the Conquer Childhood Cancer Act (S.
911). Before you can vote for it, it has to get to the Senate floor,
which means it has to have 60 co-sponsors. It has 53 today, and I
wish that you were one of them.

Your Friend,

Erin Buenger

Don't look for any more posts until at least Monday. At 6:00 this evening I start an eighteen-hour training course to get my "E" License to coach soccer (three hours tonight, nine tomorrow and six on Sunday). I'm pretty good at book learning, but thirteen of the hours are out on the field and involve the students (like me) pretending like they can actually play soccer. I can already tell I'm out of shape just thinking about it. Did I mention I was old, too?