Throughout Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, we’re sharing stories about what childhood cancer asks of children and families—not only during treatment, but long after it ends.

This week, Ukandu's Director of Behavioral Health, Dr. Joel Lampert, reflects on one of the harshest realities of childhood cancer.

If you're looking for additional support - whatever the reason - know that we are here for you. You can contact Joel here.

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There are some things you collect over a career that you never intended to keep.

For me, some of them are memorial announcements.

Most are tucked away in a journal. A few are pinned to a board in my office.

I couldn't tell you exactly when I started keeping them. I don't remember making a decision that these were things I should save.

I just know I couldn't throw them away.

Every one has a name. A face. A family. And every one brings something back.

Sometimes I remember the time we spent together. Sometimes I remember a hard conversation—one of those conversations you wish no family ever had to have.

Sometimes what comes back is something much simpler.

A laugh, a joke, a moment of connection.

Something funny that happened in a hospital room on a day when there wasn't much to laugh about. And sometimes I look at those announcements and find myself wondering about something else entirely:

Who would they have become?

I grew up listening to Paul Harvey tell us “the rest of the story.”

Every once in a while, I look at one of those photographs and wonder what Paul Harvey might have said if he'd been given the chance to tell the rest of theirs.

Would this child have become a teacher?

A nurse?

An artist?

Would they have fallen hopelessly in love?

Would they have traveled the world—or happily stayed close to home?

Would they have had children of their own?

What would their parents have teased them about at 30?

What would their siblings have called them for advice about?

What would they have done with all of those ordinary Tuesdays they should have had?

We will never know the rest of those stories.

And that is one of the realities hidden inside a statistic we rightly celebrate.

85%.

Today, roughly 85% of children diagnosed with cancer will be alive five years after their diagnosis.

That number represents extraordinary progress.

It represents decades of research, clinical trials, better treatments, and generations of clinicians and scientists determined to give children more tomorrows.

Most importantly, it represents children who get to grow up.

That is worth celebrating.

But after enough years in pediatric oncology, it becomes difficult to hear 85% without thinking about the other side of that number.

Because some of us know their names.

We've met their parents.

We've laughed with them.

We've worried about them.

We've sat together when the news wasn't what any of us had hoped for.

And we've said goodbye.

There have been too many goodbyes.

I don't know that I could count them anymore.

I'm not sure I want to.

Because this is where percentages stop being particularly useful.

Fifteen percent sounds clinical.

It sounds manageable on a graph.

But there is nothing clinical about a parent leaving a hospital without their child.

There is nothing statistical about a sibling growing older than their brother or sister ever had the chance to be.

And there is nothing abstract about saying goodbye to a child you have come to know and care about.

Most of us have some connection to cancer.

A parent. A spouse. A sibling. A friend. A colleague.

Maybe yourself.

And if cancer has ever come close enough to touch your life, you know how quickly statistics become personal.

You remember the phone call.

The waiting.

The scans.

The strange new vocabulary.

The way an entire family's world can suddenly revolve around a laboratory result, an image on a screen, or the expression on a doctor's face.

You learn to hope fiercely.

And that is why the progress we've made in childhood cancer matters so much.

More children are surviving.

Treatments are improving.

Children who once would not have had a chance are growing up, going to college, building careers, falling in love, and starting families.

We should never stop celebrating that.

But Childhood Cancer Awareness Month also asks us to remember that not every child gets the rest of the story.

And not every family gets to leave cancer behind.

I think about those families, too.

I wonder how they're doing.

I wonder about the birthdays and graduations and holidays that have come and gone.

I wonder about brothers and sisters who grew up carrying both their own lives and the memory of someone who should have been growing up beside them.

And I hope those families know something:

We haven't forgotten.

We haven't forgotten your child's laugh.

We haven't forgotten the hard days.

We haven't forgotten the funny moments or the things that made them unmistakably themselves.

We haven't forgotten you.

My door is still open.

Years later.

No explanation required.

Because caring for families through childhood cancer cannot only be about the children we're able to cure.

Sometimes it is about staying when we cannot.

Sometimes it is about sitting beside someone when there are no good words.

Sometimes it is about having the hard conversation.

Sometimes it is about saying goodbye.

And sometimes, years later, it is simply about remembering.

I still have those announcements.

Some tucked safely inside a journal.

Some looking back at me from the board in my office.

They remind me how extraordinarily far we've come.

And how far we still have to go.

They remind me why the research matters.

Why better treatments matter.

Why supporting families matters.

Why we keep doing this work.

But mostly, they remind me of children.

Children whose stories were far too short.

Children whose families still carry them forward.

Children whose “rest of the story” we will never get to hear.

So during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, we celebrate the 85%.

With everything we have, we celebrate them.

But we make room for the other side of that number, too.

For the children we miss.

For the families who carry their absence.

And for all the stories that should have had so many more chapters.

Until every child gets the chance to grow up, there will always be more work to do.