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A cancer survivor as a teenager, Kevin Fern wants to bring awareness and fundraising to the nearly 280 childhood oncology camps in the U.S. and Canada. When you take a cross section of people, very few people know about the oncology camp organization and the healing environment that they provide as part of the overall treatment of cancer. 'Children go to the hospital for treatment and they go to the camp to be cured.”
The camps offer summer sessions for kids aged 9 to 18 and their siblings along with a multi-night camp for families of children under 9. Most of the campers are either in remission or in the last stages of treatment, The camps serve as a reset button to restore a sense of normalcy after a debilitating disease.
Kevin Fern left the Manhattan Beach Pier Sunday March 24, 2018 pushing a medical IV pole symbolizing childhood cancer. Fern, along with the pole, should arrive at Boston Children's Hospital roughly seven months after he walks 4,000 miles across the country. The cross-country journey is intended to raise $250,000 towards childhood oncology camps.
Why an IV pole?
As Fern slowly makes his way across the
country, he'll collect the names of childhood cancer patients on
plastic wristbands hanging from the IV pole. The pole itself, he said,
is largely symbolic. “It’s very symbolic in my memory of the chemo
that I went through,” Fern said. “It’s like a rugged cross. As it
makes its way across the country it’s going to get beat up. That IV
pole will become a monument of me physically carrying that child's
struggle of chemotherapy and cancer all the way from LA to Boston.”
Fern said. "It's not about me. It's really about the children and
adolescents, the burden of their chemotherapy as well.”
Giving back
As a teenage, Fern eventually got through the
treatment, which lasted about six months. After turning 18, he became
a counselor at a childhood oncology camp outside Philadelphia where he
was raised. In 2013, he got back into the camps and started
volunteering at Camp Okizu, in Northern California. My mission is to
bring awareness and provide the much needed funding to support these
camps and the services that they provide to give a safe, rewarding and
healing experience for the children who have endured so much during
their treatment, and now the opportunity to just be a kid at camp.
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