Regards
Scott E

Thank you all for your support! We maintain our resolve to accomplish the feat of raising $1 million. It just won’t occur on the original date planned.

Regards
Scott Evangelou
on behalf of the team

The Death Valley Child Cancer Challenge is a charity close to my heart. I am not athletic, and have no particular skills that are useful to this cause, apart from general wordsmithing. But maybe I can turn my wordsmithing to some good use.

Here is what I propose. I will seriously attempt to write 27000 words in 9 days, and win Nano. I am calling out for sponsors. 10c every thousand words, or even a cent a word. The teeny tiniest bit would help. Or even just a once off payment.

All sponsors will get a pdf version of the final product – I make *no* promises about quality, since it will, to all intents and purposes, be a first draft. Should it even actually go to print, I will send 1 randomly drawn sponsor a copy. If I get more than 100 sponsors, I’ll send out 5. 150 sponsors, I’ll send out 10. If it gets higher than that, I’ll adjust accordingly. If it does not go to print, I will still edit and jazz it up and send out e-copies of the final draft.

This should give me the incentive I need to finish, and you’d be helping a good cause.
You can donate directly on the website, here, and then comment here letting me know that you have donated for this project.

If you wish to sponsor, rather than making a once off donation, simply comment on at my Livejournal or on my Facebook note, and let me know what you want to pledge, and how you want to count it. EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS.

Oh, and please, help spread the word.

Thanks!

Jax Goss

http://www.fundraiseonline.co.nz/ChildrensCancerCharitiesTrust/

Our latest donor is Peter Brooke from Otago Polytechnic, who gave US$100!

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Remember, we have a Facebook contest running now, where you can win great prizes!

Dear loyal facebook fans: get ready to win a brand new iPod Shuffle or 2 tickets to Buller Adventure Tours Jetboating on the West Coast of South Island, New Zealand.

Here’s the objective:

1. be the Death Valley Child Cancer Facebook Fan to recruit the most new fans, or
2. be the Death Valley Child Cancer Facebook Fan to recruit the 2nd most new fans

Here are the rules:

1. each of your new recruits must fan our page and then post your name in the “Discussions” tab topic named “Contest”
2. you have precisely 3 weeks to recruit the most fans until 21 December to recruit the most fans
   
3. the 2 contest winners will be announced on Monday, 21 December 2009 and prizes shipped the next day

So, go email everyone in your address book. Contact all of your facebook friends; bebo, myspace, twitter, youtube – any social media sites you frequent; even workmates.

Go kick arse!

For those who are new on the block and don’t know who I am, I was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia in October of 1984 and under went the standard set of chemo until March 1985 when after a conference between the medical staff and my family we made the decision to attempted a bone marrow transplant. This was to become the first successful bone marrow transplant in Wellington hospital. Many thanks to Dr Carter, Dr Green and their superb team, and the fantastic support from my family and friends especially my sister who donated the marrow and my Gran and Mother who were constantly by my side.

The transplant preparation was very different back then . It started with chemo to kill all my red blood cells then eight hours of full body radiation, with the bone marrow then dripped in over night.It took three weeks for the new cells to start growing, in this time I was in isolation & on TPN. I finally left Wellington hospital in May with my new marrow fully grown.

So for about the past 10 years the medical team haven’t seen me because I’ve had no problems. However that doesn’t reassure my parents I’m sure that they would like the doctors to see me far more regularly.

I missed out on a year or so of school went to college and did a year at varsity thinking that I may become a psychologist, gave up on that idea as I don’t think I was ready to take on some one else’s problems as well as my own.

So left and went to work on a couple of farms then moved to Christchurch and worked as a security guard for a couple of years before heading off to Australia and then Europe where the fun really began. Worked managing a couple of bars in Aus intermingled with four wheel driving around the outback.

Moved to London just before the millennium and started working as a roady in the rock’n’roll industry, setting up for concerts and some of Europe’s biggest festival’s like Glastonbury which runs for 3 days and has 120000 concert goers and 20000 staff completly crazy lifestlye change for this little country boy.

So after a few years of doing most things that my mother told me not to do I settled down a little and toured with a symphony orchestra for a few years every summer. Come winter I would go off to Africa, America, Eastern Europe and South America for a little look around.

5 years ago I returned home with my partner Bridget and set up in Queenstown, decided that I was old enough and ugly enough to get a real job so started an apprentiship as a builder.

After trying for a family with no results I had a test to confirm that I was sterile, something that for years I tried to kid myself that I wasn’t. After much discussion with my partner we decided to utilise the donor insemination program at Otago Fertility Clinic.

Two and a half years ago we welcomed the arrival of our first son into the world, came in a hurry by caesarean section and spent a few days in intensive care so I can now appreciate a little more how my parents felt when I was diagnosed.
Eight months ago went had our second child, a girl ,so now life is really busy.

All is well now though now I can start worrying about what my little ones will get up to out there in the world.

I hope this finds everyone well and in positive spirit.

Best regards
Tom Glover