Bobby and Cait, I miss you both. Every time someone asks me why I continue to do all the things that I do, I think of your faces and relive memories of time spent with you. We don't have a cure, and we don't have a vaccine, so I'm not done yet. And every time I think of these losses, I also think of those who have come through and survived... survived the disease, survived the treatments, and continued to thrive (yes, L and H and M and H, I'm talking about you!)... and I'm given hope. This is the hope that keeps me going and going and going.

This week, I showed my fundraising totals spreadsheet (of course I have such a thing!) to someone and they noticed something I'd missed...

... as of my most recent set of donations, I've raised just a hair over $58K in the eleven years I've been at it...

... which means I've averaged raising $100 a week for the past eleven years. A hundred dollars a week... for ELEVEN FEELING YEARS. You people are amazing, and I thank each and every one of you fit your support, whether financial, emotional, or otherwise.

And I thank Bobby and Cait and all of the survivors for my inspiration... even if I would happily trade all of that cash for them to be back with us today.

History: http://bcfunds.lhhf.org/
Current: http://www.avonwalk.org/goto/ralph

Hey folks,

This letter contains both a short and a (very) long telling of the events that occurred last fall. My hope is that the average reader will be bored out of their mind less than halfway through the ramblings of the long version.

SHORT FORM

The unfortunate incident is over, with stipulations made by attorneys and approved by the court, that are acceptable to all sides. I will not participate in any rumors regarding further consequences. Thank you for your support, and for neither staying nor feeding any rumors.

Yes, I'm honestly satisfied with the results. And so are the other parties.

( Click to read the Long FormCollapse )
Here I finally come to my preferences and hopes:

• Hope: It is my personal desire that this letter goes far beyond the people on my immediate LJ friend's list -- please feel absolutely free to pass along this link. In a perfect world, anyone who heard about the original incident, colored by rumor, will see this post.


• Hope: Given that I am naming no names (other than my own), I would very much appreciate no names being attached in any followups -- any followups which include any third-party's[*] names that appear *on this journal* (or in any other forum that I have any control or influence over) will be removed.


• Fact: I am specifically leaving out a number of salient details. If you have first-hand knowledge of these details, they are your details to recount or not, as you choose.[**]
  
  
  • Hope: If, on the other hand, you have heard through the rennie-rumor-mill that things were a lot more exciting and wish to post what you're sure must have happened because I (or others) are covering up the truth... please keep it to yourself. We all know that the surest way to distort the truth is to listen to rumors and to expound on them in the retelling -- and that has sadly (but predictably) happened in this case.
  
  


• Hope: While my statements and opinions in this note specifically address the incident of 8/31/2013 and its aftermath, I would hope that anyone who reads this missive apply the same basic ideas and actions to any other stories, rumors, or other fascinating facts they encounter in life.

Conclusion

There it is, the entire story laid out. It's over, and I've sighed a huge sigh of relief that it is; six months is too long for this to be hanging over everyone's heads.

Thank you for reading this far. Thank you for being interested in learning more than the juicy rumors and gossip. Pretty boring stuff, eh?

---

[*] If anyone wishes to post their /own/ name in conjunction with this, that's on them. But I won't post it, and I am requesting that nobody post a name that is not their own.
[**] I hereby release any and all people from my request(s) that they keep either their side or my side of this story from the general populace. If you have first hand knowledge about the events or their aftermath, I no longer ask you to keep them to yourself.

One weekend next May, I'll be getting up at a ludicrous time (around 2am) on Saturday morning and making my way down to the scaffold-covered Washington Monument. I'll spend several hours helping very sleepy pink-clad individuals (and groups of individuals) get their *cough30poundsmyasscough* luggage-for-the-weekend loaded onto the back of a 24' truck. And then, there will be a quiet time.

Every year, I enjoy this time of the morning. It's the time after the walkers and crew of that year's Avon Walk for Breast Cancer (or most of them, anyhow) have already arrived at Opening Ceremonies -- and before the Walk itself kicks off. There's no hustle and bustle. There's no shouts of "Go walkers!" (nor even of "We love you, Crew!") and no rhythmic clapping and no rustle of hundreds of pairs of sneakers. There's just me and my truck and the sound of infrequent traffic going by. This is my time; this is the time I get to just myself. It's my time to remember Bobbi and to remember Cait and the good times I shared with them. It's my time to get angry about the misdiagnoses and about the sudden loss of these wonderful women. It's my time to remember their smiles. It's my time to smile and think about the dear friend (who's even getting a copy of this email) who, when I was training for my very first Avon Walk, was going through chemo of her own -- though I didn't know it at the time. It's also my time to remember the (far too frequent) phone calls from other friends who knew that I "got it" so included me on their short list of folks to call after their doctors had uttered the terrifying words "summation artifact" or "abnormal mass" to them -- and turned their life upside down for a time. They got their lives back, or at least most of them got most of their lives back.

I want everyone to get their lives back - actually, that's not entirely true. I want everyone to have the chance at a life without the topsy-turvy insanity of getting that terrifying conversation with their doctor. I want cancer to be gone. Right now, in this time and in this place, the Avon Walk is doing amazing things for breast cancer research - some of which is helping other cancer research. They are also supporting wonderful organizations who provide assistance for those individuals and those families whose lives have been turned upside down.

I want to keep supporting these friends. I want to keep supporting the Avon Walk. I want to keep supporting Food and Friends, and all the rest. And that means that I'm asking you (again) to help.

Please take a few minutes to sit down and think about what you might be able to afford. Ignore the pre-selected amounts ($39.30 or $78.60 or any of the others). Think about what you can give in this time and in this place in your life. If you can handle $500 or $1000, then please consider such a gift since that is what you can afford. If you can handle $5 or $10, then please consider such a give since that is what you can afford. Remember that it's not about your individual donation, it's about the sum total of all of the individual donations. Over the past ten years, I've received individual donations that ranged from $1,000 to $0.64 (the change in their pocket), and the reason that those two donations stick out in my mind isn't their financial value, but rather what that money meant TO THEM. Together, all of these hundreds of dollars and all of these handfuls of change, have added up to an amazing total which surpassed $55,000 in donations through me last year -- and well over $100 million in donations through all of the Avon Walks in the past decade. No one person did all of that - but you all had an imporant part to play in it.

Can you keep going? Can you do it again? Thank you either way. Thank you for supporting me and thank you for keeping me going and thank you for understanding that you're going to keep getting these pink emails from me from time to time... at least so long as our friends and our familes keep going through fights with cancer.

I'm out of words, so I'll just say it one more time.

You rock. Thank you.

Ralph "Sasquatch" Nelson
http://www.avonwalk.org/goto/ralph

So the new job supports Komen with t-shirts, jeans days, etc. I'd like to show them that their employees can help the breast cancer cause without only helping Nancy Brinker & Co.
 
If you're able, please donate to my Avon fundraising before 8/20/2013. Not only will the money go to a good cause, but ALSO[1] will trigger a bonus donation[1]. If you don't want to donate online, feel free to pass along cash to me which I'll donate and then get my employer to corporate-match, as well. ;-)
 
[1] if my donations exceed $250 before 8/20 (i.e. within 90 days of my registration), the Avon Foundation will kick back my $65 registration fee as a donation.

DONATION LINK: http://www.avonwalk.org/goto/ralph
FUNDRAISING HISTORY: http://bcfunds.lhhf.org/

The lion's share of what follows is and has been on my donation page for several years. Each year, I look it over and try to decide what I should write this year... but I don't change much. What is here is from my heart and from my soul.

Each year, I ask each of you to dig deep into your over-stretched finances and find something to give to this cause that I (and many of you) find vital. This year is no exception. 

This year, though, there is a catch. This year, I'm asking EARLY. Why is that? Why would I be asking for more money not even a month after doing the 2013 Walk? Because it's worth more money to the cause, that's why! The Avon Foundation has generously offered to credit my $65 registration fee as a donation if I get a head-start on my fundraising. Who wants to see that additional donation? I DO!

Please Donate Early

---

"I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all." --Leo Rosten

We still live in a world where friends and family hear words like "summation artifact" and "abnormal mass" and the far-from-immortal "I'm sorry to tell you this." We still live in a world with breast cancer and I find this unacceptable. I find it unacceptable that each month, my friends and loved ones perform their monthly exams knowing that they could find something that could scare the hell out of them. I find it even more unacceptable that other friends and loved ones do not perform monthly checks because they're scared of what they might find.

I have a dream of the future. I want to be (much) older and sitting around after some family event. I want to be kicked back in my comfy chair, talking to my grandchildren about the old days. I want to remember a dear friend to them and tear up when I think about the memory of how they were taken from me so suddenly. I want -- so badly I want -- to hear one of my grandkids ask me "But why did they get breast cancer? Why wouldn't they just get the shot? Doesn't everyone get it?" I want breast cancer to be looked at the same way that polio and mumps are today... a terrible disease from a bygone era. I want it gone in my lifetime.  

You. That's right, you. You can help make it go away.  

I do what I do for this cause because breast cancer kills people. I'll say it again. Breast cancer kills people. It's killed my friends. It's killed my extended family. It's forever changed the lives of scores of people I know and care about. And worst of all... in nearly every case, were the cancer detected in time, it could have been mitigated. It might have even been stopped in its tracks.  

Some other cancers are making huge strides, and other cancers are not. I had an up-close look at one of the former in 2011-2012 when my girlfriend was diagnosed with Hodgkins - and then (with the help of her oncologist & team) kicked cancer's ass. We need to bring breast (and all of the other) cancers into this category as well.   A few days before posting this (late May 2013), one of my dear friends celebrated 10 years of something else. She celebrated 10 years of being breast-cancer free. She's one of the success stories that I love to think about.  

Every single year, I hope to make it through "another year" without anyone I know dying, being diagnosed, or losing a loved one to breast cancer. Since I started doing this, I've only had a very few years where that has been the case. 

Check yourself. Check your partner. Get your friends and family to check themselves. Get out and make sure that nobody dies from ignorance.  

Don't be silent. Don't be complacent. Get out and walk. Get out and crew. Get out and cheer. Get out and volunteer. And if you can't take an active role, then please consider donating towards someone who can. Someone like me. Someone like my Team Wench teammate(s). Anyone who is putting themselves out there to make a difference.  

Don't just sit there. Do something. Do anything. But don't let another person's life get cut short by this disease.

Over the past 10 years, I've been raising money for the Avon Wall for Breast Cancer. When I started down this path, I didn't know (so I thought) anyone with Breast Cancer. It was just a Good Thing™ that I could sui, so I did it.


Then I lost two dear friends.

And I discovered that another had been going through her treatment as I started this while thing.

Then I heard (sometimes after the fact, sometimes real-time) about detections of an "abnormal mass" or other terrifying words and phrases.

Now it is ten years later. My end goal has never changed in all this time. I want a cure, and I want an immunization, and I want these things in my lifetime.

I'm no micro-biologist. I'm no epidemiologist. I'm not even an oncologist.

What I am is dedicated. What I am is committed. What I am is persistent. What I have are awesome people in my life who, because they believe in me and what I do, or because their lives have been similarly affected by this disease, sort me and my fundraising efforts.

Over the past seven months, I've dune very little fundraising. I seem to have a problem among people to support a charity when I can't do so myself.

It shows. My fundraising totals are lower than they've been in a very long time.

This is where you can, if you are able, help.

Can you donate? Not "maybe later" and not "next payday". Yes, the money will still be useful and used later. But this afternoon, I turn my life and my energy and my sanity over to this year's Avon Walk. In about 5 hours, I will walk into Event Eve. And when I do, I'd love to be able to do so with as much money raised as in prior years.

Do you have $100? How about $50? $500?

Please share what you can.

This is all about the future, with a bit of emphasis on today.

What can you do today?

Thank You for donating. You folks are amazing.

Tears. Again. Damn it.

... but not the only thing! Yesterday's 20 minute nap got me through the ready of the day, and yes I slept much better last night. However, there really is more to this seagull than sleeping (and complaining about not doing so! :-) )

The walkers began during up yesterday afternoon around 1:00, We had an amazing number of volunteer Tent Angels to help... so many, in fact, that I think I only set up about 3 Walker tents (plus a couple of Crew tents). And last night, I proved that I AM able to set up these tents in the pitch black. :)

Out of a Gear/Tent crew of seven, I was the only one to stay on site. Everyone else bailed to "cramp Westin" along with what had to have been over half of the walkers!

I am so tempted to register to come back down here next year, but with my current crop of money quotes, it's not in the budget.

Now I just need to hang out, waiting for Closing CEREMONIES.

Two hours sleep takes its toll.

Bags are unloaded. No walkers here yet.

NAP TIME!