Twenty Five Years Of Special Love

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Twenty Five Years Of Special Love

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Dave Smith, guitar in hand, grins as he launches into the chorus of his
original musical number "No Mo Chemo." At a table to his side, Coleen
McGowan and her mother Rose sing along to lyrics 25 years in the
making. Smith's concert in the Northern Virginia 4H Center's Dining
Hall is part of the twenty-fifth reunion weekend for Special Love, a Winchester VA based charity that provides services and support to children with cancer and their families.

A glimpse through twenty-five years of Special Love scrapbooks reveals
a storied past leading up to the organization's silver anniversary.
From its humble beginnings as the brain-child of Tom and Sheila Baker,
Special Love has grown into one of the most successful and effective
children's cancer charities in the nation. Today, drawing heavily upon
the medical expertise of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda
Maryland as well as a staff of volunteers, survivors, and parents,
Special Love provides a week long camp for childhood cancer patients,
an additional week long camp for patent's siblings, and a host of
weekends, outings, and events for survivors, family, and friends.

Smith laughs as he finishes another original song, quipping that, in
twenty-five more years, when Special Love reconvenes to celebrate its
fiftieth anniversary it will also celebrate the twenty-fourth
anniversary of the eradication of childhood cancer. The audience
laughs. It is a dear but distant hope for the patients and families
that fill the hall. Even so, idealistic as it is, the sentiment is not
lost upon them. Much has changed since Special Love first opened its
"Camp Fantastic" in 1982. Childhood cancer survival rates have
skyrocketed as surgical, radiological and chemical therapies have grown
more sophisticated. The terrible side-effects of treatment - the
baldness, weakness, and pallor traditionally associated with
chemotherapy - have been significantly diminished by an ever increasing
understanding of pharmacology and oncology. Many of the children of
Camp Fantastic 2007 bare little resemblance to their predecessors of
twenty-five years past, their full heads of hair and less sickly
appearance belying a childhood fraught with the anxiety and uncertainty
of a potentially terminal diagnosis.

To them, and to their families, Special Love is an oasis of support
and reprieve. Surrounded by peers suffering from the same ailments,
campers are free to be children rather than patients. Surrounded by
laughter and playful screams, parents compare notes on treatment side
effects and seek a mutual understanding in a camaraderie of sleepless
nights and panicked phone calls. Amidst all of this, a family of sorts
has been born to which survivors, some decades out of treatment, return
as prodigal children. Indeed, scattered amidst the hundreds in
attendance are some of those very first campers. Older now and with
children of their own, their presence imbues these proceedings with a
palpable sense of cautious optimism. In their faces, and in the faces
of their young families, the hope of survival is affirmed.

And survival is what Special Love and other children's cancer charities
is in the business of cultivating. The impact of cancer upon a family
and upon a child is staggering, not just physically but psychologically
as well. Those affected suffer a profound sense of "otherness,"
seemingly frozen in a day to day struggle as the rest of the world
passes them by. Addressing this mental consequence of childhood cancer
is among Special Love's most important roles. As doctors, nurses, and
lab technicians tend to the delicate balance of drugs and treatments
that ensure a child's physical well-being, the volunteers and staff of
Special Love tend to emotional well-being as jesters, confidants, and
caregivers.

There is a unique culture here - exuberant in the defiance of
mortality. Children, parents, and staff are all acutely aware of the
weight and import of the health issues at hand, yet true to Camp
Fantastic form, the reaction is not one of trepidation but rather a
celebration of life and childhood. It is an enthusiasm and optimism
that is both palpable and contagious. In a few weeks, bus loads of
children from MCV, Kings Daughters, NIH, and UVA health centers will
arrive on this 4H Center Campus for the 25th Camp Fantastic. If
previous years serve as a guide, by week's end the local kids of Front
Royal Virginia will spend the rest of their summer hopping towards the
pool while each holding one leg behind their back. There is a profound
measure of hope in that sight. To see these children run, laugh, and
play in the warm summer sun despite all that has and will happen to
them and further to see them first accepted, and then strangely
emulated by the camp's local community is a powerful reminder that
childhood, at least, is universal.