No Beer for Chap!! An Appeal for sponsorship.
Last updated : 14 December 2004 By Bigrich.....
On Monday 26th May 2003, Me and my closest friend Carrie Smith, went to Sheffield’s Northern General hospital for the results of some tests about her fits (thought it could’ve been epilepsy but nobody was really sure so her GP sent her for tests at a hospital), seeing as she had asked me to get time out of college to go for some support I had obliged.
We were taken into a private room with a senior male nurse and a female staff nurse, they were very calming and friendly but what followed broke my heart; “there is no real calming way to tell you this, as much as it pains me to tell you, I can say you’ve got cancer of the brain, unfortunately that is not the worst piece of news I have for you, since the tumour has attached itself to your brain there is nothing we can actually do to calm this situation down” this wasn’t good news, we were both distraught and then when the senior nurse said “because the cancer has progressed so much and so rapidly I have the heart braking news that this cancer will be terminal” during the rest of the discussions we were told to expect 12 months but could be “anywhere between 3 and 30 as it can never be predicted”. After about another hour of conversation and comforting we left with just 2 pieces of main advice;
1- Contact Neil at TYSOC
2- Live life as you have always wanted to, go out and enjoy things like never before.
As soon as we got back we telephoned Neil, this guy was amazing! Almost straight away we had arranged a meeting with him, he came round to the house that Saturday (May 31st) and we discussed what Carrie wanted to do, she was told to bear in mind that things would only be booked on a month by month basis for the obvious reasons.
TYSOC stands for Terminal Youth Sufferants Of Cancer, basically what they do is care for people diagnosed with terminal (or basically cant be cured) who are under the age of 21, there are other charities such as Macmillan nurses who help cancer sufferers but there was nothing else designed for the youth age band, basically TYSOC rely on donations and sponsorship to make the sufferers final days/weeks/months/years heaven and to help them not worry about what was happening to their bodies.
They organise day trips, discos, events, VIP concert tickets and other such things free to the sufferer so they can live life full and enjoy doing it.
Unfortunately, even though sponsorship and donations do come in, running these outings is very costly, because of that, they have to enforce that there is a maximum number of ‘patients’, for the past few years (Neil wasn’t sure when this was first implied) this number has been 75 and there has been afew cases where they have had to turn people away, and those people are the ones I feel most sorry for.
As the months went passed, we saw Neil 2 or 3 times a week as we went on trips and the like, nothing had to be paid for by us for Carrie (the trips that I went on I had to pay a fee for but only about 30% of what it actually cost to go on) as the charity TYSOC paid for all her expenses.
On a day trip to Granada studios, I promised Neil, Carrie and all the other helpers and sufferers on the coach that before I finish university (bearing in mind that I start university in September 2004, this leaves me three 3years) I would raise at least £1000 for TYSOC for everything that they have done, not just for Carrie but for all young cancer sufferers.
At around 9:50am on Thursday 4th December I received a phone call off carries dad, bearing in mind carries dad and I never really saw eye to eye I knew something was wrong, as I answered the phone I could just hear him crying and he couldn’t speak properly so all I could really make out was “Carrie……….sleep” I didn’t want to believe the obvious so I jumped in a taxi and went straight to her house, I knocked on the door and carries dad answered in his dressing gown and it was clear from the state that he was in what had happened, I went upstairs to her room and saw the most chilling site in my life, the person that meant the most to me in life (I was even closer to her than family), pale as a sheet and cold to the touch. A vision that will never leave me and a thought that I can never forget.
Neil and the other members didn’t just stop there, they helped me and Carries dad (she had lost her mother in 2001) through the next few months, this was especially helpful to me as I had missed so much time at college going to see Carrie and had been on the brink of quitting many times, they helped me get back on track and get back working for my A levels which were in June.
I have always helped out at the group fundraising that TYSOC have done but I never did anything on my own towards that £1000 that I had promised. Over the past few months I have been thinking of what I am going to do for this fundraising and I have come up with 4 tasks to get sponsored for within the next few years:
1) I am a very heavy drinker and Carrie always criticised me for this, in her memory I am doing a sponsored sobriety test. I WILL NOT touch even a single drop of alcohol from 00:00 on 01/01/2005 (yes I will stop drinking at midnight on New Years Eve) until 23:59:59 on 31/01/2005. That is 1 month / 31 days / 744 hours / 44640 minutes / 26784000 seconds and most of all 4 football matches (oh no, got to try and watch Rotherham sober 5 times, now that will be tough, 450 minutes of Rotherham whilst sober, only done it twice in the last 2 years that I can remember of), for starters, I may decide to go on longer but I am only going to get sponsored for a month of it.
2) Carrie (aswell as many others) moaned about my body hair, I have a patchy hairy chest, very very hairy legs and an even worse backside. Some people dared me to wax my backside, for charity I am going to go one step further: every single hair on my body from my neck downwards will be waxed (armpits, chest, stomach, arms, feet, legs, possibly my eyebrows and then the famous back sack & crack), I am not yet sure of the date (going to have to prepare myself for the pain) but it will be in march or April.
3) 04/05/04 Leeds vs. Rotherham on foot. Me and hopefully a couple of others will be walking from where we stand/sit in the Tivoli (depending on the club allowing us access into the ground) to our seats in the away end at Elland road, this is approximately 40miles
4) Then the big one, no date set yet but will be sometime in early 2006 I think. Getting in the back of an aeroplane tied to another guy, going thousands of feet up into the air and then jumping out. Yes I will be doing a skydive, no plans decided yet but will be wearing a Rotherham shirt and will skydive most of the way before parachuting the rest down.
Those are the 4 events that I am doing to get sponsorship for TYSOC, first of all I am only asking for sponsorship for my sobriety event. I have promised to raise £1000 but I am hoping to raise a hell of a lot more for them for what they did. I will report back with the results and more info on the other events at the beginning of February. Until then please sponsor me via the button below, you can sponsor me for either a sole event or for all of them, it’s up to you but every penny helps a young person enjoy their final times.
Regards
Mark Chappell
