Onco Heroes

The phone rings and I hear the voice of a woman I don’t know, who begins with the following sentence: „We need your help, we want to tell the world something important. We have already spoken a lot, but so far the voice has not been heard very much, maybe because the voice has not had a face so far, that’s why we need you. Can you give our voice a face?“.

The woman’s voice belonged to the mother of a child suffering from cancer, who, like many before her, was able to undergo the treatment and healing of her child in the City Hospital in Dornbirn. She tells me: „the children’s oncology department in Dornbirn is to be closed and if that is the case, the children will mostly have to be treated without their parents in Innsbruck and there are still many who will be affected by this“. I ask: „how many?“ – „too many“ she says….

I read through both sides of the discussion and look where the voice has already spoken. The words have a smell, it smells like politics, it smells like controversy and fronts. I want to do it, I want to put a face to the voice, 11 faces to be exact. Children and young people from four to twenty years old, all of them have fought – some are still fighting. The children fight for their lives, the parents fight for humanity.

Tears come to my eyes – not for the first time. When I looked at the photos with my wife, we both cried, now that I am writing this text, I am crying again. I cry and wish so much for more humanity, I wish for a world in love.

Now the voice has a face, may many more people look at it in love and then hear the voice again….