This one is particulaly near and dear to my heart.  You’re lucky this is via computer and not paper or there’d be an embarassing number of tear stains.

My dad had cancer.  And then the cure for that cancer gave him cancer.  The cancer that the cancer cure gave him killed him.  Cancer sucks.

While we were dealing with the second cancer (Acute Myeloid Leukemia, for those of you who like details) the bills began to get on top of us.  The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society stepped in and helped us pay for some of it.  And when we couldn’t find a bone marrow donor that was compatible with my dad in the family LLS helped connect us with Be the Match, which helped us organize bone marrow donor registration drives.  (It’s free to register through a drive!  And painless!  All you have to do is swab your mouth.)

LLS does a lot of really important work from supporting people with cancer to funding research to end the aformentioned cancers.  My family would have struggled a lot more without them.

There are lots of ways to help LLS.  You can donate money, volunteer, harass government officials into spending more money on cancer research, or take part in a fundraising activity like Light the Night.