Raffle!

I am fully fundraised and have exceeded my goal so it's time for The Raffle!

For every $20 you have donated you'll receive a Raffle Ticket, with the chance to win:
- Pair of Pampered Chef cooking Tongs
- PartyLite Global Fusion Hurricane candle holder
- A 75-Minute Massage from Ann Cabano
- 4 Harkins Movie Passes
- An original Watercolor painting by my friend's Mom, entitled "Hope"
- An original Photo taken by Me! And modified by my friend Andy Westel to look super cool.
- A gorgeous pair of Tahitian Pearl Earrings

I was going to have people CHOOSE where to put their tickets, but that means if you put your 1 tkt in to win the earrings you can't win anything else, for example. So I'm not sure of the best way to do this. I will be deciding very soon though, and an email will be coming soon to let you know what's going to happen.

If anyone wants to donate and hasn't yet, you can make a donation to my Light the Night Walk fundraising page instead. The money goes to the same place (The LLS), just through a different program. Click HERE to go to my LTN Page.


Thanks!
Amy

AMBBR

AMBBR stands for America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride, which was June 7th in Lake Tahoe, California. Here is a photo I took outside my hotel room, it was incredibly beautiful there.

The LLS does AMBBR as one of it's Team in Training events and I had never been, so I teamed up with our local chapter and went along to help with what is known as SAG (Support And Gear). That's a vehicle that rides around on the route with things like water, gatorade, First Aid, etc., in case any of the riders need help.

Tahoe was truly beautiful though cold! I had to buy socks, a long-sleeved shirt and a sweatshirt because I was totally unprepared for the weather. The 1st full day there it rained and hailed, but our riders were still out there getting in a practice ride before the big race Sunday! Can you imagine? Those are some incredibly dedicated riders!

It was so incredible to see all the TNT riders from all over the country there. Over 6 Million dollars were raised by our teams at this event, pretty incredible! I met another honored patient (I'll call him "Tom") who was there to cheer on his best friend. We actually wound up riding in the SAG truck together, and had a great time. Tom has non-Hodgkins lymphoma, which is only treatable but not curable. He'll have to fight it for the rest of his life, and will go through periods of treatment and remission, unless a better treatment that will offer a cure is discovered.

That's a big reason why I am still involved, why I still fundraise every year. I think a lot of my friends and family think to themselves; What's up with this? She's better now, why's she always hitting us up for money? And this is why. Yes I'm better, but throughout this experience I've met so many others who haven't been as lucky as I've been, people like Tom who may not live to see his kids graduate, and get married.

The five-year relative survival rate for patients with Hodgkin lymphoma has more than doubled from 40 percent in whites in 1960-1963, to more than 86 percent for all races in 1996-2004. Five-year relative survival rates are 91.6 percent for all patients who were less than 45
years old at diagnosis. (LLS "Facts 2008-2009")

That's huge strides made in the last 40 years alone, and it just reaffirms my belief that we could see real cures for these diseases in our lifetime. If only the funding is available to support the research.

Please donate today, you can save a life. Just like someone saved mine.

(click here to make a secure online donation with your credit or debit card)

Working on Fundraising Today

This evening I sent out a bunch of emails and Facebook messages requesting donations. I hope I get some responses.

It's hard because these days, in this economy, I know people don't have a lot of spare money, and they seem to feel like if they can't donate a large amount that they shouldn't donate at all, like somehow I'll find their small amount insulting. When in actuality, I'm honored by every donation I receive, no matter the amount. That someone takes the time to make a gift of their hard-earned money to support me - that's a wonderful gift. And to me, it really is the thought that counts.

And if any of my potential donors are reading this, there is a section on the donation form entitled something like "Leave Comment & Edit Donation Privacy" and in that section (you click the header to expand the form) is an option for you to Hide your Donation Amount. So if you don't want anyone else to know how much you donated, you can select that option. You can also put in a display name, like my friend the Belly Dancing Queen (LOL), or make your gift Anonymous and even I won't know who you are. Well, except for that I work for the LLS and could find out.... But no one else would know!

So what do you say? Buy me a virtual Birthday/Remission celebratory drink by making a donation? What's the average drink price these days? Well a Martini can easily run you $10 or more, but a Happy Hour Margarita at Salty Senoritas is only $4.99. And how much is a bottle of Crystal? ;) I'll let you choose.

Peace & Love my friends,

Amy

6 Weeks of Iron

So on 4/24 I got the call that I needed iron infusions, and I finally had my 1st one yesterday, 5/8. And I have to get 5 more treatments - doesn't that sound fun? It's actually no big deal. It's not painful or anything, but the sense memories sitting in that chemo chair brings back... not terribly comfortable. The smells there, sitting in the chair, being around all those other people receiving chemo... It's difficult.

Last week Tuesday I went to Salty Senorita's on Cinco de Mayo, to sell beads and glow bracelets. My thanks to the staff there and Tony the GM, for being so accomodating and pleasant to work with. They have great people there.

My friend Linda met me there to help out and we raised $176.00. I'll be putting my share on my site soon, and once Linda gets her site up I'll post hers. I was hoping to do way more, but it amounted to about $25/hour for both of us, which isn't bad at all. I really thought we'd do better, as everything we were selling was for $1.00, and most people can at least spare $1.00, but there just wasn't enough interest I guess. Maybe the location wasn't the best. We were in old town Scottsdale, and there were a lot of young, college-age kids. Next time, if there is a next time, maybe we'll hit up a Chandler or N. Scottsdale location, somewhere with more adults and more money.

Though we didn't do as well as I had hoped, we had more than what we started with, and that's something. Every dollar counts. :)

-Amy

Golf Tournament Fundraiser!

We almost have a date and a location! September 12th at The Legacy golf course... I hope it all comes together! Thanks to my friend Linda, for getting the date and location nailed down, we're very, very close to having it be a firm date/location. And next will be the planning!

Linda, Andrea and I are all 3 survivors of blood cancer and past TNT participants. Last year we all 3 did Nike and this year we want to do both Nike and the Dublin Marathon, if you can believe that. Yes, I must be insane. The big obstacle? Money - of course. To do both we'd each have to raise about $8,000 total. And thus we plan a golf fundraiser....

We're hoping to raise about $15,000 at our event, enough for all 3 of us to go to Dublin as we believe we can raise the $3,000 necessary for Nike on our own. Wish us lick! I mean, luck! That truly was a typo, not a Freudian slip of any kind, but I found it funny that I typed it that way so decided to leave it, give you all a good lauch. Laugh! Sheesh.

So keep checking back here for updates, we'll need volunteers and golfers and who knows what else. Will keep you posted.

Later gators,
Amy

Pumping Iron

My NP called this a.m. and said the blood tests were all good, but I'm definitely anemic with low iron stores so it's time for Iron Infusions. Yay!

Normally there's a product they dispense that is "less frequent" but apparently there's some sort of shortage of it and they have none, so I have to do some other product that is a once per week infusion. This means I'll have to visit the Oncologist office 1x/week for... I don't even know, she didn't say. Someone is to call me to make the appointments and I guess they'll tell me how many weeks to start.

Sound like fun? Oh boy, does it!

Soon I will be "pumping iron" for real as info meetings are going on right now for this season's Team in Training events, which means actual training should start soon. I'm guessing mid-May but I'm not certain yet. I'm still doing my Belly Dance class on Tuesday nights and trying to walk with Amy S. on Sundays, and I hooked up with a woman on Craig's List who was looking for a "Walking Buddy", which should work out well.

That's it for now, more to come.

Amy

Hard to train while anemic...

So I saw my Oncology Nurse Practitioner last week because the last few times I was in she said I was "borderline anemic" and she wanted me to follow-up with her at a later date. Lately I've been feeling even more worn out than usual so I looked up the symptoms of Anemia on webmd.com and what do you know? I've got lots of them. Have had a few of them for a very long time.

So I go back in last week and say, "Remember how you mentioned possibly doing IV Iron if I'm still anemic? Well I think we should do that."

And she replied, after looking at my test results, "Yeah. I think we probably should. You're definitely anemic."

No IV Iron yet, she's still running a bunch of tests and waiting to get some results first I think. The lab had to take another couple of vials of blood from me to run the additional tests so I got stuck twice that visit. I've been hoping to hear something soon because I had really expected to get the Iron infusion last week, during my visit. I was hoping she'd say, "Yep - let's do that right now." because then I'd feel better. Why she didn't I'm not sure, probably because she wants to run those tests first. She did say they were checking something, my "Iron Stores" I think, and that if those were really low she'd get me in for the infusion and not wait for the other test results. So maybe my stores are ok. All I know is I feel run down most of the time and don't have a lot of energy. I get tired very easily and that's no fun. :P

Good thing training hasn't officially started.
Amy