Sunday, November 16, 2008

Lets hope for good Blood Counts!

I sure hope that the Neupogen shots worked and I will have good White Blood Cell and Platelet counts. This will mean that I don't have to be AS worried about getting sick or catching some type of virus/infection. If the blood counts are good I'll likely head home to Cobourg with Diletta and Isabella for a visit (Tuesday to Friday). This will be great! My mom had a designer furnish a baby room for Isabella and she hasn't even seen it yet. It has been done for months and she hasn't even gone in to take a peak...so there will be a big un-veiling.

Also, the Ladies Night Out (LNO) event is happening in Cobourg. This is a fundraising event that has happened for the past 3 years as a benefit for Attitudes For Education - The Clay Elliott Scholarship foundation, of which I am the chairman. If you are not familiar and would like to be, please visit here: www.attitudesforeducation.com . In addition to the LNO there is a benefit concert for the foundation the same night ... to be put on by the Jim Cuddy Band (from Blue Rodeo). WOW - this is huge! This is going to be an amazing night - 400 people that will be exposed to our foundation and the great entertainment of Jim Cuddy (I bought a Best of Blue Rodeo CD a month back and have been listening to it in the car). We will likely make about $10,000, but we also hope to dramatically increase the awareness of the foundation and the scholarships that we provide. There have been radio and newspaper ads running for the past couple of weeks. I doubt that I will attend either (too risky to be exposed to sick people) - but I am very much looking forward to seeing some people and maybe driving by to see everyone going in.

When I was getting my last group of chemo drugs I was talking to one of the nurses, Sheila, and she is working on getting some new computer workstations at the cancer center. When I say working on, I mean trying to raise money to buy - She works as a nurse and is trying to raise money to make the Cancer Center better. Very cool. They want to set up 2 kiosk's for patients to research cancer topics. They plan on having reputable websites bookmarked for patients to search, read and print. This is very important for many reasons; there is a lot of bad information on the Internet; people that do not have computers or Internet access; older people that are not sure what they are looking at, etc etc. I have spoken with a friend of mine, Shannon, at Working Environments Inc ( a company here in Windsor that sells desks, chairs and such) about height adjustable/wheel chair accessible desks and she is going to get me a great deal. I would also like to see if I can get someone/company to donate computers, printers and other accessories.

Another thing that bugged me about the chemo treatments were the chairs for my family beside the bed. Being an Ergonomist, I can't let this go. They were hard and uncomfortable. I sent an email to Shannon at Working Environments regarding this as well...Shannon will likely help me a ton! I'm not sure about paying for this...so I may end up trying to raise money or talking to the manufacturers. We'll see...I plan on talking to Sheila tomorrow to see where things are at on her end.

Finally, one other thing that I did was get in contact with the Lymphoma Foundation Canada ( www.lymphoma.ca ) . I did this because they have 2 things I am interested in...first is the support groups that they have set up in various city's....why not Windsor? I'll see if I can help with this. Also, the money that they raise appears to go to some great initiatives. The have a "know your nodes" education program (this is very important for early detection), a fantastic resource manual (that I found myself) and they provide research fellowships for research. I have reviewed their website and like what I see. You may remember that I was questioning where all the money goes for cancer research...for this organization, it appears to be very transparent (I read their financial statements).

Just because your body slows doesn't mean that you mind has to. But don't worry Mom, Grandma, Aunts, Uncles, cuz's, etc....I won't over do it. Promise.

If anyone reading this has any ideas of how they can help...please contact me!

Let's hope for good blood counts!

Jeff

2 comments:

Dora and Dave said...

Hi Jeff,

Glad to hear you've been in contact with Lymphoma Foundation Canada. Let me know if there is anyway I can help. Hope you go up and enjoy your family this week.

ps. Dave and I are loving Isabella pics!!!

Anonymous said...

Hi Jeff,

I've just been catching up on your blog. Way to go and keep fighting the fight!

Also, I've got a used computer here at the Club that I would be willing to donate. No monitor and its not state of the art, but perfectly good for surfing the net.

Speak soon,

Brian