I want to keep this simple. I received an email from my friend Emily this morning. Emily was my best friend growing up in Clinton and is still a dear friend of mine. I met her boyfriend Aaron last summer and thought he was a wonderful person! He was recently diagnosed with lymphoma. It always sucks when people get cancer, but it sucks more when it’s somebody young and (obviously) somebody close to you.
A lot of runners and bloggers do fund-raisers/bake sales for this sort of thing. That’s not really my style. I don’t like to make people jump through hoops for a donation. I CAN do something like that. I could say, hey, if you all help me raise $2000 I will run the Rock ‘n’ Roll St Louis Half-Marathon for the cause. But let’s do this instead. If you can, give a small donation. If you can’t, that’s okay too. But I bet you can give a little something. Let me assure you that Aaron fully deserves what you can give.
I’m going to put Emily’s beautiful email here. Visit the link, see what you think. Look within yourself. Don’t make me sponsor a bake sale, please!
Dear Friends and Family,
Thanks so much for all of your kind words and encouragement since my boyfriend Aaron was diagnosed with lymphoma. He completed round #4 of chemotherapy last Wednesday and has a follow-up PET scan today to determine how effective his treatment has been so far. After this, we hope Aaron will be done with the chemo and start radiation therapy. I am happy to report that it’s been a long time since he’s been immobilized by the tumor in his hip — the road to recovery is long though. He so misses the outdoor activities he loves — mostly hiking, biking, and mountain climbing!!
Many of you have asked how you can help out Aaron during this time. As you may know, Aaron is a special education teacher at Chase Elementary School in Athens and he is unable to work until his immune system is stronger. Unfortunately, he’s also out of sick leave, no longer receiving pay and facing mounting medical bills. Several of Aaron’s friends and family have established an online fundraiser to raise donations for both his medical and living expenses. Our goal is to raise $6,000 for him by September 14.
Will you take a moment to read more about Aaron’s situation and consider contributing to his fund?
http://www.giveforward.com/helpaaronkickcancer
Again, thank you so much for your kindness and support. We both feel very loved in our community of family and friends.
Much love,
Emily
so sad :s
Annoying, not sad! He’s going to kick cancer’s ass!!
Cancer does suck. *If* they need to look into other therapies in the future, http://www.thewellnesswarrior.com.au/ is a link to a Wellness Warrior Blog. Jess is a super young girl with a very tough cancer and repeated chemo didn’t work (the cancer kept coming back) so she is doing the Gerson Therapy. Her Mum was also just dx with Breast Cancer and is now doing the therapy along with her. They are both doing well, thus far. Jess is 16 months into the therapy. Whatever therapies they use, an incredibly empowering woman is Kris Carr, who made a documentary (also VERY young) called Crazy Sexy Cancer (even on netflix) and has written several books, the last being “Crazy Sexy Diet” (which isn’t really a “diet” at all). The link will surely raise some money especially with the power of Facebook & Twitter. Whatever therapy someone chooses, these are great resources to do to ensure it doesn’t recur. We all have cancer in our bodies and we can’t cut it all out-so it is trying to change the gene expression. Another blog I recently discovered is “Chris Beat Cancer” where he did surgery, opted out of chemo, and did a plant based, organic, greens diet with juicing. Now he is including more foods. None of these things actually hurt you, so no matter what treatment, they can help prevent it from coming back. “Healing Cancer from the Inside Out” is an amazing documentary, and also on Netflix. A “cure” in cancer is 5 years, traditionally, so they can say a 5 year success rate and the person may die the sixth-guess what-the cancer was considered “cured”. If I had it to do over again with a few people I know, I would have tried, a little bit more, to point them in some other directions (in addition to whatever treatment they choose). I normally would not have done this, but have really seen too much loss this last year from this “epidemic”. “The China Study” is also great. Our bodies are amazing and can turn nearly anything around, longterm, but we have to give it the right tools. It’s great that you are posting the link-sure it will get cross-posted and the money will be raised! My heart goes out to your friend & his family. It’s a very tough place to be, and that’s why looking into this stuff now, for ourselves, and early in a diagnosis is a good idea. Often people feel very hurried to make decisions on the spot, and that is tough. All the best to your friend-I am sure he will come through!
Thanks, Vegan Vixen! I’ll check out those links and share them with Aaron. He’s hoping the traditional therapies will knock out the cancer and is looking to positive changes in his life to both rebuild his health and keep the cancer from coming back. It’s funny you mention cancer being “cured” after not reoccurring for 5 years — he and I were talking about that very same thing a few nights ago.
http://crazysexylife.com/
The link above is to Kris Carr’s site. It isn’t all about cancer at this point, but there are different categories.
Green Smoothie Girl site, another blogger, did a 7 part series about cancer. She is going to be working on a documentary about many of the Cancer Clinics (alternative) in the US and probably over the border in Mexico-Some of the posts have lots of comments from people who healed their cancers using different methods.
Thank you, Hannah. It means a lot to Aaron and me that you’ve shared this.