Sunday 17 July 2011

June's Fundraiser for Evie

Raising funds to help Evie started in earnest with an event in June, 2011.  Whiskey Dick in Las Vegas hosted an event where everyone had a great time and the live show attracted loads of people.  There was also a raffle where items such as concert tickets, a motorcycle helmet, tow bar, Budweiser cooler, skull cups, beer signs, bottles of alcohol, gift certificates from WalMart, Hogs and Heffers, Whiskey Dick's, Herbal Chef, 3 Tomatoes, and more for everything from food, tattoos, piercings, air conditioning service, manicures, drinks, oil changes were raffled to raise funds.  The evening brought in an amazing $3,600 towards the cost of Evie's medical bills.

I think that with the first very successful event, the fight to help Evie has really swung into an active series of campaigns.  A Cruise Night was also held on 9th July and the next event is Monday 18th July, 2011 at

Mulligan's Landing
2851 N Rancho
Las Vegas, NV
All proceeds from the show will be donated to http://www.nvccf.org/ in a trust to help pay for Evies medical expenses.

The Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation will also be on site from 8pm - 10pm to swab people. See if you can be a bone marrow match (bone marrow transplants are done differently than in the past... they use stem cells not the actual marrow) Come out, get swabbed and stay for the comedy that starts at 10:00

$10.00 at the door
$5.00 shot specials

Featured Comedians for the event:

Brandon "Gooch" Hahn
Phil Skratch Cummings
Dee Dee the Funny Girl
Mike Shank
Keyon Booya Vanover

Saturday 16 July 2011

A Cancer Diagnosis

In January 2011, I received a diagnosis of womb cancer;  I hadn't felt ill and had virtually no symptoms so it came as a total shock to me.  However, at the age of (almost!) 62, I have had a great life and have had the chance to do some fun things.

A few weeks ago, I heard about Evie and her illness from her grandfather;  Evie is only 18 months old and here she is with a huge fight on her hands against a form of cancer which is so rare that only a few cases are diagnosed each year in the whole world.
Juvenile Myelomonocytic Leukemia.
There are only 25 cases per year in the whole world of JMML so there isn't a whole lot of research on it as of yet.  So far what we know about JMML is that 95% of children afflicted with it will die without treatment.  The only curative treatment for JMML is what's called a Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT).  Chances of a child needing a second BMT run around 50%, especially when there is no related or family donor as in Evie's case. 
Out of 5 million people that are in the registry, not a single one matches Evie's type of marrow and the family is forced to settle with a 4/6 cord blood match later in the month.  They will be traveling to Tuscon, AZ for BMT later in the month of July and because her husband has to take over two months off of work, the family is reaching out to their community and asking for help.  
Lets all get together and help heal Evie - and by helping Evie, hopefully we'll get some action going to help the other youngsters worldwide who are born with this rare, dreadful disease.  Evie's campaign can be found at http://www.helphealevie.com.