September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. In the hopes that new readers might come across this post (please share), it is important to start off by stating the fact that my son, Ty Campbell, died in October 2012.   He had just turned five years old.   We will never really know if it was the cancer itself or the treatment that ultimately took his life, but we do know this: he died because there were not enough safe and effective treatment options available to him, which is the same reason why any child loses his or her life to cancer.   After trauma, CANCER is the number one cause of death in children.   Not enough is being done to advance cures. This photo was taken two weeks before his tumor was discovered (he was two years/ten months old).   Over the course of 26 months in treatment, Ty had more than 20 surgical procedures.   Any parent who has ever had the difficult experience of leaving a child in the hands of a surgical team – whether for something as ha