Moneybeg for February: Gettin' in under the wire!

I have a friend named Ed. Ed is a lovely person. He's been called the James Bond of Weird; I prefer to think of him as The Silly Ninja. He loves his wife and cats and gadgets; in fact, it was Ed and Anne who donated the nifty electronic write on/wipe off board with which I communicated after my surgery. Ed and his lovely wife are half of the Fearsome Foursome of Friends with whom I love to spend my time.

That said, Ed is doing this:

www.stbaldricks.org (sorry; Blogger's link dealio isn't working right.)

Ed will be shaving his head at a cheesy chain restaurant on the 20th of March in order to raise money to fight childhood cancers. Now, I have this to say about that:

Leaving aside how scary (or not) Ed might look bald, childhood cancer is a fucking scary thing. See, cancer normally happens when your DNA gets worn out and breaks or replicates itself strangely, which is what happens over a lifetime of exposure to things that can fuck up DNA.

Kids' cancers happen without that lifetime of exposure. Kids don't get exposed to forty years' worth of sunlight, or smoked meat, or HPV, or any of the other thousand things that can cause your DNA to break and you to end up talking funny without a plastic part shoved up your mouth.

In short, childhood cancer is scary. Rare, but scary--mostly because it tends to be really aggressive, no matter the type.

In the 1950's, acute leukemia meant a kid died in a few days. Now those kids are being cured and living normal lives, thanks to the efforts of people who researched and sweated and experimented in order to find a cure for acute childhood leukemias. That research takes money, plain and simple. (It also takes weirdos like Ed who are willing to shave their heads, but that's just another way of raising dough.)

Thus, at the end of February, I'm asking you guys to do this: click on the link above. Read about St. Baldrick's. Decide, if it's something that speaks to you, what amount you'd like to donate. If you'd like to pledge especially to my pal Ed, I'll happily put you in touch with his pledge page once I've cleared it with him (because, um, those words just came out of my fingers and I have no clue if he'd be okay with that, but if he's not then well, we'll figure it out somehow).

If you feel particularly adventurous, shave your own head. I would do it, but I'm already too close to bald for it to make a difference. Plus, I sunburn.

There you go: The Head Nurse Monthly Moneybeg for February 2011!

Have at it, peeps. You've changed at least four lives so far. Let's see how many more we all can change together with this.