Children shouldn’t experience cancer. The disease should be left to those who’ve spent a few more years on this earth.

Someone diagnosed with any type of leukemia in the early 1960s had about a 14 percent chance of being alive five years later. Today, those chances are vastly greater. 

The cancer statistical bibles have been released this year. The American Cancer Society focused on the outstanding news – that cancer deaths declined 20 percent between 1991 and 2009. What wasn’t mentioned is the rising number of different types of cancers and increasing numbers of deaths estimated for this year – 2013.

Chronic myeloid leukemia – CML – is a relatively rare blood cancer that’s diagnosed in about 5,000 Americans every year. It used to be a dire diagnosis with a poor outlook. Not anymore, though.

Nick Gonzalez is a Child Life Specialist. He talks and plays with kids who have cancer every day. These infants, toddlers, kids, adolescents and young adults come to the Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin, Texas to be treated  - mostly for leukemia, or for brain tumors or soft tissue cancers.

A patient remembers the day he was diagnosed. Writing on a patient support group forum, he recalls, "I had one of the first oncologists I saw tell me 'you got the cancer I can treat. One pill a day and you carry on. Who's luckier than you?'"