27 May 2009

Cancer - it's nasty stuff...

In 2000, I went to a PartyLite conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The American Cancer Society is the charity of choice for PartyLite. They do several things throughout the year including rounding up for donations to raise over $1,000,000 a year for the American Cancer Society. Also, at their conferences they pass around and do separate collections of donations and donate that amount to the local Ronald McDonald house, wherever the conference is being held. But, I digress...at this particular conference, since it was so close, we had a lot of people from our region attend. They did a little demonstration of sorts as a whole group of well over 13,000. They started by having those who currently personally have or have survived cancer stand up...a few hundred did so...then they had everyone who knew someone who has or has survived cancer stand up, all but a few hundred of those there were now standing! In our group there was one lady that was not standing. She was very touched by this demonstration. She has never personally known anyone who has ever had to deal with cancer. This is very unusual, as one could see by this simple demonstration! This great woman was a smoker and such, this motivated her to quit smoking. In the almost 9 years since that amazing and small conference, I have lost touch with her and don't know if she is still not smoking, but I remember how touched many of us were by her motivation and realization of how wide spread cancer really is...we were all also very much more motivated to help in raising donations for The American Cancer Society.

I tell that story to remind people that cancer is out there and that it affects all of us, in one way or another! In my recent visit to Mesquite, I read an article about the current Miss Mesquite and how she is trying to educate people about cancer and using nutrition as prevention. At the bottom of this article they had the picture below of the different color ribbons for the different cancers. I thought this was really cool and wanted to share it with all of you.

Oh, incidentally, I do still sell PartyLite and if you are interested in helping our cause along, book your party and I will donate a vast majority of my profits to the cause, as well....

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