Saturday, June 11, 2011

Relay for Life 2011


Last summer Eric and I attended the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life in Boise to help a friend in charge of the event and to see what it was all about. It was right in the height of the summer when I had just been diagnosed with Stage 4 Melanoma and didn't know what treatment I would choose. It was a very difficult and emotional time for us and I remember walking amoungst the survivors in the first lap to kick-off the event thinking that if I was still around the next year that I wanted to somehow do more...

Here we are a year later (and still kicking! ) and we are planning to do just that. We have formed our own team, called Safe In the Sun, and we have two missions. The first is to help raise money to go to the American Cancer Society. There are several ways we are hoping to do that. One way is to get on-line donations (by clicking on the link below) from our family and friends. And on the actual day of the event/relay, we are hoping to raise even more money by selling baked goods and crafts. A good friend of mine thought of selling s'mores and having our motto be, "Don't roast like a marshmellow, wear s'MORE sunscreen!"

Our second mission is to promote awareness and prevention for skin cancer, specifically for melanoma. Last year there was only one tent that promoted melanoma awareness and it wasn't well publicized. Because melanoma is the fastest growing cancer in the U.S. and the deadliest out of the skin cancers, we feel there needs to be a lot more concentration and focus on this disease, especially to our youth, who spend hours in the sun and in tanning beds, which is putting them at a higher risk for melanoma.

If there is ANY way that you can help contribute, whether that be a donation, time, or products/goods to our team and mission, we would be incredibly grateful. We know how hard it is to give up those things, so we will take whatever we can get! We really want to raise a lot of money for the American Cancer Society which helps fund cancer treatments and research, and helps cancer patients. Their motto is to "create more birthdays" for cancer patients as they work to find a cure to cancer and save lives. This is a very personal endeavor for us, not just because of my own battle with it, but because we know other loved ones that are also in the fight of their lives or have lost their battle with cancer. I think EACH ONE OF US has been affected by cancer in some way or another.

Please let us know how you can help. We are so thankful and excited for this opportunity to give back. It is the first of many in the future to come as we someday hope to start our own foundation which will help other melanoma patients and promote awareness. Thank you, thank you for being such a great support to us, we wouldn't be here without you!

Please click on link to donate! http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RFLFY11GW?px=17333019&pg=personal&fr_id=30455


2 comments:

FAMEDS said...

Hi Christina! Great to stumble on your blog! Best of luck on your journey with cancer! Have you heard of FAMEDS? Freedom of Access to Medicines in the non-profit leading the effort for the FDA to continue to allow the drug Avastin for use by 17,500 women with Metastatic Breast Cancer who are surviving with it, though they want to pull it off market after the hearing on June 28th. Please sign & share the urgent petition: http://fameds.org/petition.php

Christina said...

FAMEDS-I would love to sign it. I did do Avastin, but I don't have breast cancer. I have metastatic melanoma and my doc put me on it as a kind of "experiment" along with my other treatment. That is horrible that the FDA wants to pull it off though...