Hi Dopers,
Many of you were very helpful and supportive during my brother Tyler’s four-year struggle with chordoma. The last six months without him have been very hard for all of us. Dealing with our grief and all the other feelings and figuring out what to do next has been a struggle.
Two months ago I went to the annual Chordoma Foundation conference. I found it difficult to hear about potential treatments, improvements in survival, and the advances in everyone’s understanding of the disease when I know none of those things are going to help Tyler. But I do want to help the people I’ve met over the years and I don’t want other people to go through what we have. And maybe more than either of those things, I want to honor something Tyler worked very hard at. So I’m asking people to consider making donations to the Chordoma Foundation. (Shodan started a thread asking for donations last year and I’m thankful.)
I also didn’t want to just ask for money. I’ve written a lot about Tyler, but I wanted to do more to share him. Tyler was deeply passionate about music and never got tired of listening to it and talking about it, and it was one of the things he continued enjoy right up until the end of his life. One of the things I’ve enjoyed the most in the last couple of months is looking through his iTunes and going over the playlists he made. What’s represented on here is his creativity and his love for old blues, rock from the '60s and '70s, funk, and lots of jams. I don’t know what all of these playlists were for - some may have been just for fun and others were for his friends - but I’ve really enjoyed listening to them as a way to feel connected to him. There’s also a lot of great music in there, and some very creative combinations of artists and songs. It says a lot about what he was listening to and how he was thinking about music.
So here’s what I am doing: if you donate $10 through my family’s Chordoma Champions page, I will send you a list of some of Tyler’s mixes and you can choose one for me to send to you. For $20, you can pick a second CD, and so on and so on. (I have 11 of them on my iPod.) If you’re interested, make a donation through the web page, send me an email, and you get your choice from those CDs.
I want to add that the fundraising total reflects some of the money raised by Tyler and my family, not just me. I know some posters here made donations in the past and found the lack of updates frustrating. This year they made some changes in software, and the donation totals are now updated daily. I know how aggravating the lack of updates was for me and for everybody who donated in the past.
Times are still tough, but I know how generous Dopers are with their time and their charitable donations. I think we can do some real good this way, and I hope you’ll learn more about who my brother was. Thank you all.
[And yes, I did get permission from the mods before starting this thread.]
I really want to check them out.