Friday 4 November 2016

Day -1


When you have a bone marrow transplant there's a countdown to the day it actually happens.

In those days you are given more and more chemotherapy, breaking down your immune system for Day 0, which is when the new cells are transplanted from the donor into you. You get weaker, and weaker, and then the cells are supposed to grow and replace your old immune system.

Today is Day -1 for our charity work. I'm here in the middle of the Kiwanis Room, downstairs at Medicine Hat Lodge, having set up some things and done a test video stream before we go live at twitch.tv/gomerstraw at 8 a.,m. (Mountain time) Saturday and begin our 25 hours of gaming for the Alberta Children's Hospital.

The last few days have been increasingly stressful, but they pale in comparison to what kids in the hospital face. The marathon itself will be tiring, but then we get to go home to our beds. We aren't stuck in isolation, uncertain of what's coming next.

A couple weeks ago a team from Shaw TV Medicine Hat came to do a story on #Dominicstrong. It was posted last night. The idea is it can run in future years, with them tagging whatever event we're doing next at the end. They did a great job.


After putting out the word that we are still short of our US$20,000 fundraising goal, there's been an influx of huge donations. As of this blog post we're at $US18,000 as a 20-person team. It would be amazing to break through the goal during game day. Visit http://www.extra-life.org/participant/sean or http://www.extra-life.org/participant/trish to donate through Trish or I - make sure you're clicking a blue donate button as the green button you might see elsewhere on the site only donates to Children's Miracle Network as a whole.

If you donate before midnight tonight (Nov. 4), be sure to include a note saying boy or girl to be entered in our gender reveal prize draw. We reveal the baby's gender Saturday at 4 p.m., then will do the draw out of whoever had guessed correctly. The winner gets a pair of #Dominicstrong word art mugs.

It's amazing in here. The projector screen can work with a gaming console or play videos or games off my computer. Shaw came and set up a custom Internet router for us to use. EasyHome will be here later with a dozen TV's. Bob and Jordan and James were all here to help set up and drop off all of their board and video games to use, and other gamers will be here tonight getting their systems set up for all to play.

Day 0 is supposed to be scary. It's the day when things can go wrong. But when Dominic's Day 0 came we danced, smiled and gave high-fives. It was all about hope for a better tomorrow.

Game day will be all about dancing and high-fives and thumbs-ups too. Because by raising these funds for the hospital, we're helping give sick kids and their families support too.

1 comment:

  1. I loved that you danced and smiled! thats great!! keep up the good fight!!

    ReplyDelete