Families and staff at Windsor Regional Hospital have recognized a rare disease that devastates families -- childhood cancer.
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and the hospitals' Paediatric Oncology Clinic marked the day with speakers and exhibits.
There are 15 new childhood cancer cases in Windsor-Essex every year and 30 children are in active treatment.
The survival rate is 85%, but families want people to remember the 15% who don't survive.
Caroline Rice's 2.5 year old son was diagnosed with cancer in October, 1999. Today, her son is a healthy 22 year old travelling the world but she knows, some families aren't so lucky.
"Something that you all parents would know when you get that diagnoses in the emergency room, you think 'this can't be happening', but for some reason it does," said an emotional Rice.
Mason Macri passed away at the age of four in June 2016 from a rare form of cancer, but his parents have launched the Fight Like Mason Foundation to help children with cancer and to find a cure. Mason's mom Chantelle Macri says the day she buried her son is forever etched in her memory.
"His Spiderman blanket wrapped around him. Hulk hands holding each side of the casket and mine in my husband's hands, not letting him go. Childhood cancer, our biggest enemy, our worst nightmare and the thing we promised Mason we would defeat," she vowed.
"Childhood cancer took life from us, it ripped us of the best thing we had ever met, our lives will never be the same and our hearts will never repair."
To date, the Fight Like Mason Foundation has raised a total of $500,000.
There are 1,300 childhood cancer cases in Canada. 800 of them are for children under the age of 14.