Pediatric Oncology Group of Ontario<\/a>.<\/p>\n“Every year, over 400 kids are newly diagnosed with cancer, and approximately 4,000 children are actively receiving treatment or follow up-care at any given time within Ontario,\u201d Kennedy said at a press conference at HSN. \u201cWhile rare overall, these numbers highlight the significant impact childhood cancer has on services and families within our province.”<\/p>\n
As a parent herself, Kennedy said she could barely imagine how to react to learning your child has cancer. She said she admired parents and children for the “incredible courage it takes to move forward one day at a time” and for all the days that follow. She also praised the health care workers involved with the children at HSN..\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Our community is fortunate to have the unwavering support of the clinical heroes who work here within POGO,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cThis is more than just a program for our patients and our families. It is a lifeline. The NEO Kids program clinic offers children and families a level of care that is not only medically exceptional, but profoundly human. And I think you could see that today. This small but mighty team supports over 100 children who are either in active treatment, in recovery or in aftercare.”<\/p>\n
One of those young people getting care is Julian Stachon, soon to celebrate his 16th birthday. He was at HSN for Thursday’s celebration, along with his mother, Amber-Jane Stachon.<\/p>\n
Julian was diagnosed with leukemia when he was 13, said Stachon, and that meant going to Toronto’s Sick Kids Hospital for aggressive treatment.<\/p>\n
“We were there for a few months, kind of back and forth between here and Sudbury over those next couple of years, and he actually finished treatment in October of last year,” she said.<\/p>\n
Sadly, when Julian went to Toronto for his three-month follow up, it was discovered the leukemia was back. Since then he has had a bone marrow transplant, followed by a period of aftercare and it has only been about four weeks that he was allowed to be back at home, while taking out-patient care at HSN.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Julian is a left-winger, who loves playing hockey when he’s not sick; likes video games and has plans to get his own driver’s licence soon after his next birthday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So what’s the best part about hockey? Julian answered quickly.<\/p>\n
“Winning!” he grinned.<\/p>\n
Stachon said she was so pleased recently when Julian’s teammates from the Sudbury playground league stepped up earlier this year and put on a fundraising skating event at Kivi Park.<\/p>\n
“It was really amazing to see teenage boys coming together, you know that, because they’re always horsing around. Yeah, to see them come together and support them was really amazing,” she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, that was nice,\u201d Julian added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Caregivers who took part in the hospital event included Vicky Wilton, a registered nurse, and pediatrician Dr. Sean Murray. They both spoke about the importance of the NEO Kids centre and cancer treatment.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We had a celebration of end-of-treatment today,\u201d Murray said. \u201cWe had kids that are on after treatment today, we had kids that are off treatment today, and it’s so nice to see how well they’re doing and how resilient they are. But at the same time, it’s really important to recognize the challenges that families go through, not just during the treatment, but all through their lives.<\/p>\n
“But I think it’s really important that as a society, we have to understand that we are still needing to support kids with cancer all through their life journey, and certainly it’s been a real pleasure and honor for me to be able to do some of that work, especially when they’re younger,” he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a nurse, Wilton commented on the importance of remembering that young patients are not merely younger, they’re also children.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s really hard to be one person in a community with cancer.\u00a0 When you’re an adult in the adult world, you might know a lot of people that have cancer. But you could be the only kid in your school or the only kid in your whole town that has cancer, and that’s really difficult for especially adolescents and their families to deal with. They can really feel very isolated, and no one really understands what’s happening with them,” she said.<\/p>\n
An important thing to remember said Wilton is that the cancer centre provides so much in the way of after care for the young patients.<\/p>\n
“Because now we see kids in aftercare and how much support they’re getting and how well they’re doing, and their success stories are there,” she said.<\/p>\n
Len Gillis covers health care and mining for Sudbury.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patients and caregivers gathered at Health Sciences North on Sept. 25 to observe Childhood Cancer Awareness Month The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,93114,84,392,15014],"class_list":["post-185113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-childhood-cancer-awareness-month-2025","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-sudbury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}