I have a friend, an important person in my professional life who is one of the few classmates from Princeton who, well, unlike some people (joking!!), has actually looked out for me and shared some of the bounty of opportunity that has come his way in his preposterously overachieving professional life (i.e., by promoting my work, sending clients my way, that sort of thing).
Now I am trying to help him out, by asking you to support him via this compelling bleg, as a kindness to me and in return for the hours and hours of joy and edification I have provided, the little bit of light I have brought into your squalid existence, thanks to my work here (joking!!). But I will let his daughter, Jackie, do the talking:
This year, in honor of my 13th birthday, I am once again supporting the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s Walk to Cure Diabetes to help find a cure for this disease, which strikes 1 in every 600 kids – kids just like me. In our last three walks, we raised more than $170,000 thanks to the incredible support of my family, friends and neighbors! This year, I hope to raise $50,000 to help JDRF and its scientists find a cure.
Let me tell you a little about me and why I think it is so important that you help us find a cure. I was diagnosed with diabetes on Valentines Day in 2003. At the time, no one in my family knew what diabetes was, but over the years we have learned a lot, and now I am able to take really good care of myself. I use an insulin pump, which makes taking care of diabetes A LOT easier, but I still need to watch what I eat, count my carbs, and get lots of exercise. I have had many lows and highs over the five years diabetes has been part of my everyday life. Highs are bad for my body, because later in life, they may lead to bad eyesight, heart failure, and kidney complications. Because of the lows, I have had four seizures, which were extremely scary and the after effects are horrible. Having diabetes also means that I can’t exercise without checking my blood, and if I am too high or low, I can’t exercise at all.
Thanks to JDRF, I am participating in the artificial pancreas clinical trial at Yale University, where I am experimenting with a new continuous glucose blood sensor. So far, the Navigator has made a HUGE difference in my life. I have better control of my blood sugar, my HbA1c is lower (it’s down to 6.1!), and I haven’t had any seizures. The big news is that the FDA approved the Navigator this year, so now kids everywhere can get one too!
As I get older, I also am getting more responsible with my diabetes. Before, my parents had to check me and help me everyday. Now, I can monitor my diabetes myself. If I continue to do well managing my diabetes, I will be able to go to Italy with my grandmother next summer, just the two of us! I am really excited for that trip.
This is why my family and I are working so hard to help raise money to find a cure. If JDRF can find a cure, my life will drastically improve, and so will other kids’ lives everywhere. I hope that you will help celebrate my 13th birthday with a gift to my JDRF walk this year.
Love
Jackie Bernstein, 13
It turns out that this disease has also struck a child even closer to me than Jackie Bernstein… so I’m compelled to toss my famously considerable dignity to the wind and ask readers to help.
So… are you really such a cold-hearted bastard that you can’t click here and make some kind of donation to the cause?
Joking!! Don’t answer that! Just, though, maybe, click and drop a couple in the kitty, for whatever reason works for you?
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The really important thing about this is that unlike many other diseases, in which the solution is unknown and we don’t even know if we are looking in the right places, diabetes is both a widespread issue AND something that seems very solvable in the foreseeable short term.Â
Selfishly, I’d love it if you put your money into the disease that slowly killing my wife. But the reality is, we don’t really know exactly how it works or how to fix it. Money poured into research to cure it might help her, but it might just as easily be tons of money poured into a blind alley: an effort done too soon, done without the basic and more general research necessary to point us in the right direction.
Diabetes, however, isn’t like that. While we don’t know everything, we do know quite enough about it to make the disease more and more livable and less and less harmful. The technology and treatments are sound: they just need to advance a couple of steps down the road.
My aunt was one of the first to get a pancreas transplant, which was amazing in itself, and here we are just a few years later and we are already years, not decades, away from having complete and self-regulating insulin systems… not to mention the possibility that we may soon be able to reactivate pancreatic cells outright.
Bad’s last blog post..Religious Freedom Under International Islamic Attack
"…are you really such a cold-hearted bastard…"
I’m so very pleased that someone actually commented before myself.
I’ve given this year to the leukemia people, the breast cancer people and the girl scout cookie scammers and the sweet innocent young students on the annual magazine drive for their school which is always seemingly perpetually underfunded yet in one of the most affluent school districts and counties in northern California which homes average over one million dollars and whose students are highest rated in most California evaluations. The local high school has all the appearances of a college campus with its tennis courts, baseball field, swimming building, basketball building, football field, soccer field etc… And every election the school districts want more and more millions of dollars. If a proposal fails, the next election cycle you get to vote again for greater millions.
The promises of the ppl asking for the monies are "I" will run or walk x number of miles and please donate or (subliminally, if you don’t you are an unmitigated cruel, unsocial, bastard).
I haven’t a major complaint (well, because a bunch of this stuff is tax deductible) but can someone, anyone please demonstrate ANY evidence, the monies are properly distributed, or whether there is ANY evidence other than anecdotal that something is actually being accomplished.
Here in the San Francisco, area, there is a radio station that has something called the annual curethon. Over the years, they have raised over TEN million dollars but there has never been one scintilla of evidence that anything has ever been accomplished.
So the question is:
Are these charity
scamsrequests, simply social loyalty tests or is there something actually going on other than shipping one’s money into someone else’s pocket ?Ron,
There is nothing whatsoever personal in my comment above relative to your own post. And I am not challenging your desire to make such requests.
I hope you’ll understand.
LOL, come on McK, that was obvious. You’re just being a generic cold-hearted bastard!
Ron Coleman’s last blog post..?No longer strictly operative?
Well, now, that you’ve put it that way, I may have to re-consider and make a donation.
BTW, the second link named click doesn’t work.
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