National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

The hilarious and fearless Karen Makara.

Today we're diving into Karen's fascinating life and in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, she's sharing an intimate look at navigating her teenage son Sam's leukemia diagnosis and the life-saving treatment protocol funded by the St. Baldrick's Foundation, where she now proudly serves on the board of directors.

She shares what it means to face the unthinkable with resilience along with her amazing career, pivot from practicing... law back to her performing roots writing hit solo theater appearing in films like are you there god it's me margaret and bringing her confessional cabaret the dysmorphic diva to life today we're diving into motherhood finding light in the darkest chapters and the healing power of art

Karen, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for joining us on this episode.

We are launching this episode in September, and in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, we are speaking to Laura DeKrager-Langry, a parent advocate, lecturer, and author of The Cancer Parent's Handbook, What Your Oncologist Doesn't Have Time to Tell You, a practical guide for families navigating childhood cancer.

After her daughter's diagnosis with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL, Laura became a leading voice for family-centered care and caregiver advocacy.

She volunteers with Blood Cancer United as a Dare to Dream ambassador and a recent Visionaries of the Year candidate.

We also discussed some podcast-a-thon things because in case you don't know it, that time is coming.

It is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and stay tuned.

There will be a little bit of a goodie thing talking about St. Jude later on today.

And we also discussed moshing at concerts.

I've mentioned it a few times on the podcast, and if you follow us on Instagram, you're likely familiar with some of our story, but my oldest daughter was diagnosed with cancer four years ago, just nine days before her fifth birthday, and she finished three years of cancer treatment almost a full year ago.

And September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, so I decided to finally share our story, and what better time than now? Hey there, I'm Lauren Engler, your fellow mom friend and pediatric sleep consultant at Via Grace's.

This is a place where we talk a lot of sleep because that's literally my job, but it's also a place where we talk parenthood and real life.

And with whatever topic we discuss, we try to get across that when it comes to most things in parenting, all it takes is a plan and a whole lot of grace.

And I also think it's helpful in my own processing to share it with others.

So anyway, I figured why not now? Maybe it's kind of in faith that I'm sharing this now, not knowing where things will be in three months, let alone three years.

But also with September being Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, I think part of my goal is just to share and to bring awareness.

I'll share a bit more about pediatric cancer research at the end of this episode.

And that's what we're here to talk about today at the Parents at Work podcast.

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

And the way that I know Paula is through all the wonderful conferences that we get a chance to interact with.

And as I've gotten to know her as a leader, as a parent, and as someone that uplifts others, she came to me.

It was like, go, go, go.

But trust your gut.

Now, to answer your question about Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

I think we're in this really challenging time in which our administration has taken a lot of funding away from a lot of different places.

Either way, all of a sudden I realized, oh, wait, it's September, which is

what, Mike? It's Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

It is.

Putting together the September-focused episode of Analog is usually pretty easy because I have so much going on in September anyway that, like, Of all of the ones where you may have not been able to put any time into it, this is definitely that one.

Yeah, let's start by, I mean, we'll talk about what we're going to be getting up to throughout the month.

But why don't we actually just start by talking about St. Jude to begin today's episode, because September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

So we are asking the Relay community once again to come together to support the life-saving work of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

It's a very special place that means a lot to us all.