You so often hear the sad news, the dire predictions, the unhappiness in the world of cancer. So as this bit of good news was in my in-basket this week, I wanted to make sure and post it for all of the readers on Relay For Life (dot) Org...

First, a little background:

From www.davidmbailey.com: I was diagnosed with a GBM IV in July of 1996. After a month of excruciating headaches, I fell over one morning; family called an ambulance, and then was life-flighted to a larger hospital where I had emergency surgery July 3 to remove a baseball-sized tumor. The surgery was extremely successful. After a crash-course on malignant brain tumors, we realized we had no time to wait. We saw a regular medical oncologist, as referred by the surgeon. He gave us little hope and only offered a clinical trial using chemotherapies that had not really shown much success in treating GBM - plus, and it was a 'randomized trial' which meant that a computer would randomly pick who would actually get the drug - an important method for research, but not one I was interested in for my care. He then did the very best thing he could have, which was to tell me I needed to see a NEURO-oncolologist - some one who specialized in heads.

So I'm writing again. Another blog. And while I had no plans to concentrate much on Relay For Life or cancer or the people who inspire me to continue year after year to volunteer for ACS and their flagship fund raising program, I'm only a few posts in to the writing of my blog and the topic is just that. I'm not going to write about what got me into Relay to begin with. I'll save that topic for another day. Nope. The topic of this post is what keeps me there. Why I continue to be a team captain with the Relay and why I am a member of the committee and why I try to recruit others to join teams, form teams, become members of the committee or contribute funds to the event year round.

I do it because last Tuesday, a young woman named Monica, only 33 years old, was taken from her three beautiful little girls and her husband after fighting melanoma very courageously. And so many of us watched that amazing battle via her Caring Bridge page and so many will still attend the golf tournament and 5k walk/run fund raiser that was arranged long before anyone knew that she would not be around to see it happen.

*waves at Trish*

Surprise! Been a while since I've blogged here. Been a while since I blogged over at blogger, too. I'm on hiatus, actually. Mostly because I've been busy getting our Online Relay site in shape as much as possible with my Mac. Not liking the fact that Kintera works only fully with IE. That fact gives me some serious challenges.

I tried to find and train a replacement this year, but that hasn't been working out very well for us for various reasons and I'm ending up playing catch up now rather late in the game. I'm also creating the newsletter for our area this year (just composing and emailing it back to the ACS contact - she then prints and mails out. When I have final approval from her and from our Event chair I also attach it to the online site).

The Rick Springfield Concert to Benefit Sahara Aldridge is coming up. SOON!

How many people can we help get on that bus to help Sahara defray the cost of her medical expenses? Come on. You don't recognize Sahara's name? I've mentioned her before. But if you need a refresher, head over to my archives here and have a read. Or head over to Sahara's site and learn about her battle against a GBM tumor. Yep, a brain tumor is the same thing that got me out here raising funds because it is what they finally found was causing Keith's symptoms back in 2001.

Please visit my Blogger blog (I really can't keep up yet another blog online! I'm too busy! :) But PLEASE visit!

500 Miles - Still Running for a Reason