Kim Green, a writer for Her Nashville magazine’s online blog, wrote a great piece depicting the story behind Rally Nashville and their event coming up on September 26th and 27th, Rally Mania, in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.
The day after Father’s Day two years ago, Kim Sigmund sat in stunned silence with her 4-year-old daughter Charlotte in a pediatrician’s office, with unimaginable phrases swirling in her head. Low blood count, the doctor said. Possibly leukemia.
“I was like, ‘No way,’” recalls Sigmund, expelling a tense laugh fraught with all the terror and relief of her family’s two-year ordeal.
Kim had little time to indulge in disbelief. The daily realities of Charlotte’s illness began the day after her diagnosis. “Three blood transfusions, having surgery to install a port-o-cath, immediately starting chemo,” Kim says. “She had to take so much medicine in the beginning. She’s 4 years old! She doesn’t understand what she has to do. We had to hold her down, pry her mouth open. It’s just horrible.”
Her voice wavers for a half-second, a barely perceptible note of anguish beneath the resolute composure she’s had to master. “Coming out of the hospital … she was a different child. She was shy, she was timid, she was fearful of adults … and over the past 26 months, she has never felt good.
“The medicines are just … I mean, they’ve cured her. They’ve saved her life, but they have been very … um … difficult,” says Kim soberly, an understatement encompassing all the ways childhood cancer shreds a mother’s heart. First, there’s the shattering possibility of losing a child, a threat that never ceases to lurk in the mind’s dimmer corners, even decades later.
But even with survival, there are other gut-wrenching losses, like missing out on a regular, healthy-kid childhood. Although Kim has avoided telling Charlotte the full implications of her illness, she says her daughter understands that she’s different from other children. “We’ve tried to be as normal as possible,” she says. “We’ve continued ballet classes, she’s taken gymnastics and swimming, but she just can’t do it like a regular kid.”
Exhausted and worried moms like Kim and her friend Elaine Kay, whose 17-year-old son was diagnosed with a rare kidney cancer more than five years ago, yearn for the kind of hectic ordinariness many families take for granted. Elaine remembers a day, a few months after her son had finished his treatments, when she heard her kids bickering for the first time in more than a year. “I just started laughing almost to the point of tears,” Elaine recalls. “I’m like, ‘My kids are fighting! We’re normal!’”
Elaine lets out a joyful laugh full of hard-earned wisdom, and she’s quickly joined by Kim and Kim’s sister-in-law Jenni Rodgers. The three call themselves an “unfortunate sorority,” a stalwart sisterhood of moms who’ve declared war on childhood cancer. Earlier this year, Elaine launched a grassroots effort in Nashville to raise money for the Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research, a nonprofit that funds a broad range of childhood cancer research projects. And she drafted her friends Jenni and Kim to help.
“The Rally Foundation is the kind of organization … where you’re able to see in clear, concrete ways that a difference is being made,” says Charlotte’s aunt Jenni, a cheery brunette whose inexorable ebullience has made her de facto spokesman for this single-minded sisterhood. Because the Rally Foundation is mostly volunteer-driven, Jenni explains, 93 cents of every dollar raised goes directly to nationwide research projects.
“Really, we are saving children’s lives,” she says.
When discussing cancer, there’s a language people use; perhaps more than with any other illness, we tend to invoke the lexicon of combat, a contest of will and strength. We “fight” the disease, sometimes “beat it,” and too often “lose the battle.” If, indeed, the effort to cure cancer can be likened to warfare, these three mom-generals are just beginning to mobilize their legions. They know they’ve been lucky. “Our children have come through this, but that doesn’t absolve us from responsibility to help.” says Jenni.
As the adult women chat, Charlotte sits quietly on an oversized dining room chair, pixie-like in a pink skirt and the blonde ponytails that have finally grown back, her impossibly bright blue eyes darting around the room. She just finished her final treatment a few weeks ago and is shy about answering questions about how she’s feeling. But her older sister Caroline leaps at the chance to speak for her. “I can really see a difference in the past couple of days!” she gushes.
Jenni glances affectionately at her shy niece. “It’s always going to be painful for us to remember the path that Charlotte’s life has taken, and her graceful walk on that path,” she says. “But to be able to take that emotion and transfer that into this opportunity to be a part of Rally is the best way that I can honor that journey.”
Rally FoundationSeptember 02, 2010
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To the parents who have a child going through cancer treatment, research is everything. Thankfully, no child in my family has ever had cancer, but my dad suffered from lung cancer last summer and my older brother passed away at Christmas in 2008 from pancreatic cancer. So while my life has never been affected by childhood cancer, I have seen the devastating effects cancer can have on a family.
Her fight was so courageous it just touched my heart. Dean told me that if I wanted others to get involved, all I had to do was show the Rally video. I was skeptical until I viewed it and saw Alexa and her beautiful smile closing with “Fighting cancer was hard, but here I am still making the best of each day. Please help me and kids like me by joining the Rally for childhood cancer research.”
Since that event, I have been involved in the last two Benefits Bashes and last year’s Celebrity Softball Game. I was even inspired by “Rally Kid” Catherine Rowan to become a Rally Athlete and successfully completed the Disney Marathon this past January.
They both brought their baseballs to get autographed and as we walked to the field for batting practice, Mia repeated to me over and over “Mom, I’m just not ready yet, Mom, I‘m just not ready yet.” It was so cute; she was nervous! She of course enjoyed her time down on the field, smiled for the pictures and is quite proud of her autographed baseball. Thank you Rally Foundation for including both Mia and Noah! 


This race means a lot to me so I encourage you to come out and ride, cheer or just celebrate Father’s Day with family and friends. Here is some more insight on why I started the Tour de Harrison ride and why it means so much to me. 




