Camp sunshine helps dispel shadow of cancer
By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Staff Writer
It's hard to explain why the two happiest days of my life in recent years were spent at camp. I'm not the camping or the outdoorsy type. I don't even like wearing shorts, but at Camp Ikaika, that was beside the point.
Camp Ikaika is put together by the American Cancer Society and an amazing team of volunteers. The camp is for young people, ages 14 to 21, who have or have had cancer. Ikaika happens every year over four days and three nights of spring break, and it's a for-real camp, with cabins and sleeping bags and hikes and pranks and water-balloon fights.
I first visited Camp Ikaika three years ago when it was held at Koke'e on Kaua'i. I went as a television reporter to shoot a series on the camp, and brought with me a big bag of faulty assumptions about how sad it would be to hang out with kids who had come so close to death.
Instead, it was a blast.
There was laughter everywhere, and true camaraderie, and when there were tears, no one cried alone.
The focus of Camp Ikaika goes beyond coping with cancer. It's about succeeding in life in spite of the illness. Even more, it's about succeeding in life because of the illness.
I spent a long while interviewing a 17-year-old boy that day, a kid with the eyes of an old soul who spoke in a soft voice. Cancer is a gift, he said, because of all the things it teaches you. Cancer helps you realize what's really important.
Some people live their whole lives without ever knowing that. He said he wouldn't trade his cancer experience for anything. He died just a few months later.
This year, when I was invited to go to Ikaika as a part of the support staff, I felt almost guilty for saying yes so quickly, focusing first on what I would get out of the experience rather than what I could give. When I talked to the volunteers who have run Ikaika for years, they offered a different interpretation: It's just fun, and when you feel like you got more than you gave, that's called gratitude.
Naturally, there is an understanding of confidentiality throughout Ikaika. What is said there stays there, which is why I'm writing from my perspective and not using names or quotes.
But I can describe what I saw:
Teenage girls playing with each others' hair, saying how beautifully it had all grown back. Young men rough-housing and running like they never saw a sick day in their lives. Kids who were still weak from the illness watching the others romp and frolic, the realization growing in their eyes that the disease can be beat. I saw kids just being kids, not kids with cancer. Just kids.
Camp Ikaika and Camp ünuenue, which is held in the summer for kids of all ages who have or have had cancer, are successful because of the great care and love provided by a core of hardy volunteers. It's an amazing outpouring of individual and corporate generosity.
The success also comes in no small part through contributions by the campers themselves, who open up their hearts to make the camps safe places to talk about some of the hardest issues we as humans face.
I can't explain why Ikaika has such a profound effect on everyone there. It has to do with true understanding between the kids, who all know what the others have gone through. It has to do with total acceptance, feeling you can wear shorts that show scars from operations and not worry about who notices.
It has to do with knowing you are loved, as one does when diving into boxes and boxes of cookies from a woman who baked them special though she never met any of the campers. It has to do with talking about cancer, one of the most terrifying words, as if it is a great learning experience, an opportunity to know what's truly important.
Lee Cataluna's column appears Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Her e-mail address is lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com
