UPDATE: HELP ME BREAK $3000!!! MARCH 13th, 4:00PM @ Fado!!! Hope to see you there! PS - we do have someone on the Platinum level: Amaeya will be joining me as a co-shavee! WELL DONE, Amaeya! -- Hi, I bet by now you're wondering why I have this fake picture of me bald on my facebook, etc. profiles, and what St Baldrick's is and why I'm doing it... This is the point at which I'd like to ask for a couple of minutes from your day (I promise you it'll be worth it). Here it goes.. Why am I shaving my head? While Childhood Cancer Research is a good enough reason on its own, I have had cancer play a prominent role in my life since I can remember. Not personally, thank God, but enough for me to know it on a first-name basis, and for it to have definitely changed my life and outlook. It astounds me that something the size of a piece of DNA can have such a dramatic and devastating effect when it goes out of whack. Think about it - how many people, how much money, how much effort is painstakingly committed to trying to prevent, treat and recover from an event that we can't even see!? And it's not just about the medical side of it - the tragedy is that its effects are felt far outside the victim's body: We watched a family literally fall apart when their child was diagnosed, while we were there with our eldest (who is good as new now). Over a period of THREE days they transitioned from a normal family to one that suddenly became completely dependent upon one another, the doctors, their friends, the understanding of young siblings, their colleagues, bosses, and anyone else in their lives who could help prevent them from falling apart. Ironically, this is the one time you really are glad to have made all those insurance payments, and never complain about them again. I won't drag you through all the stories I know, but there are many of them, and even those with happy endings: A friend of our kids goes to school with a little 5-yr old called Bridget. During the Christmas holidays, she wasn't feeling so well (another ear infection!?), so they brought her to see her doctor. Relatively quickly she was identified as having leukemia, and started treatment. She did lose her hair temporarily, but because she was 'lucky' enough to have gotten a 'good' cancer (I.e., one that was treatable) she is back at school again already. While Bridget wasn't happy about the hair thing, her parents were overjoyed that this was the extent of it. We NEED more stories like this - there are many that do not end as happily, or even end until many, many years later. Simply consider how the story might have been different when you were her age... When I was growing up, Cancer was simply known as 'the C word', the thing whose name cannot be uttered - and was seen as a death sentence, spoken about in hushed whispers. This has changed, but there is still a lot of work to be done. We have to keep up the pressure on this, and make our treatments more effective, our preventative actions less barbaric and the recoveries more manageable. So, thanks for getting this far. The big sell is that I am hoping you can help me fund cancer research (the money goes to many research hospitals including Children's Memorial), and to help you help them, I am sacrificing my beautiful locks: too short and too gray for 'locks-of-love' - I just hope it grows back at all, let alone growing back without gray in there! What can you do? I call this the silver, gold and platinum-level sponsorship. For Silver you get to donate whatever feels right to you, for Gold, you get to donate and come watch me lose my hair, and for Platinum, you don't donate because you're going bald too!!! (You'd be surprised at the variety of people who do this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFP6lckZcA8 ) For those who like bulleted lists: Please: a. Donate at http://tinyurl.com/bald-daragh (Silver) b. Join me at Fado on March 13th for the event (Gold) c. Become a 'shavee'! (Platinum) e. Around St. Paddy's day, look for our shiny heads! Mom, Ronan, Julia, Lynn, the child that was in the next bed, auntie Maura, Leo, Julia (again!), Mom (again!), Bridget, Hannah, future victims AND ALL YOUR FAMILIES - this is for you. "Cheers", Daragh