I’ve attended or volunteered at three cancer-related camps over the last eight years. It all started when my friend Amanda encouraged me to attend Camp Friendship with her, where I made some friends who encouraged me to also attend Camp Sunrise. As I became staff at Camp Sunrise, I was encouraged to also volunteer at SunSibs. All of these camps are great because they allow patients and/or their siblings to participate in normal camp experiences and get away from the stress of their everyday lives at no cost to the families. The medical staff can give chemo, blood products, etc so kids can attend even when they’re on treatment. Campers come back year after year, and offer encouragement and hope to the newer patients.
Camp Friendship is for patients and their siblings and is sponsored by the Carol Jean Cancer Foundation. Some of my closest friends there were siblings, which gave me the opportunity to see the other side of things and made me much more appreciative of everything my siblings put up with that I hadn’t really noticed. CJCF is a great group - even when campers who aren’t capable of being counselors age out of the program, the camp finds ways to bring them back every summer in other roles. After CJCF’s lease was up on our campsite, we had camp at other sites for a week each summer until last year when they tried something different: a family weekend at a fancy hotel right on the Chesapeake Bay. All of the past campers were a bit skeptical about having their parents at camp with them, but the weekend was a blast! I know for many people, it was our first time staying in a hotel that nice which was an experience itself. There was plenty of time that the campers were away from the parents for typical camp activities like crafts and pool time, but the whole group activities (scavenger hunts, relays, veggie race cars, etc) were hilarious too. Even the teenagers, many of whom were dragged to camp by parents who refused to leave them home alone, had a ton of fun and didn’t want to leave. I had a lot of fun as a counselor and it was great to get to know my campers’ families. When I was in the hospital, my parents didn’t usually talk to other parents much unless I introduced them to my friends’ parents. At camp, my parents met lots of other parents, which I think they enjoyed more than they expected. Camp Sunrise is a camp for children with cancer, and Johns Hopkins took it under their wing when the American Cancer Society stopped funding it a few years ago. I first attended in 2009, and became a counselor in training (CIT) a few years later. After my two years as a CIT, I joined the activity staff, running an activity called Newsletter. The kids can draw pictures, write stories or gossip, interview and poll each other and more and then see their work in print the next morning at breakfast. Once they’re finished with their newsletter submissions, they can work on theme ideas. At the end of the week, the activity staff looks at all the submissions and decides what will be best for the next year based on what would be the most fun and has the most activity potential. Where does Under the Sea come in? That was the first camp theme I helped pick at Sunrise! Great idea MW. The National Aquarium in Baltimore even let our camp have the entire place to ourselves one evening which fit the theme perfectly (though everyone was exhausted). Many of the counselors were campers at one point or are nurses at the local hospitals, so camp is really like a big family that understands what each person is going through. SunSibs is an extended weekend camp for siblings of patients. My sister went and made some good friends and the next year I joined the staff. I can’t wait to go back in a few weeks! As a mentioned a few posts ago, the siblings go through a lot and it’s nice to give them a special weekend to get away from it all. All of these camps have taught me so much (more about that in W’s post) and I look forward to staying involved for as long as possible. This year, I joined the planning committee for Sunrise and Sunsibs, which has been a great experience. As a camper, and even a staff member, you have no idea how much work goes into making the week possible. It’s rewarding to be able to provide a fun week to other campers after I enjoyed so many years of being a camper. If you’re interested in getting involved in any of these programs, as a camper or counselor, let me know and I can give you more information! You won’t regret it!
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AuthorI’m Karen. I was originally diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) in August 2004 when I was 10 years old. When I was working on my college and scholarship application essays two years ago, I wrote about my journey. Although it was a rough few years, it became such an influential part of my life that I can’t, and wouldn’t want to, imagine my life without having had cancer. I called it the worst best thing that ever happened to me. Archives
April 2022
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