Money

Sunday is our Great Strides Walk  (See the button on the sidebar?), the culmination of the past year's fundraisers and the biggest event of the CF Foundation.  We go, we walk, we eat, we visit, we laugh, we cry.  Then we throw a dessert party at our house afterwards to thank friends for coming out.  It's a Grand Day.

But it was not always so.  For many years, we had no desire to be involved with it, or anything else officially CF related  (Other than Rees' care and doctor visits, of course.).  Ken's take was that we "do" CF all the time ~ enough already.  I just did not want to be one of those mothers  (Whatever that means.  I was a little conceited back then.).

I suppose one year, my craving for connection won out over my aversion ; I probably had also resigned myself to the fact that no supernatural healing was going to occur  (See conversion story above.).  I promised to watch some old World War II movie that evening and Ken agreed to sign up.  And it wasn't bad.  Pretty good.  Fun, even.

In the years following, Great Strides has become important to us all, as we have many  (usually)  sunny hours to meet up with old friends and introduce ourselves to new, anxious parents.  The people not there are important, too.  Not there due to hospitalizations or due to passing away.  They are missed, talked about, remembered.  As it should be.   It's worthwhile for Rees and the other children to be around lots of other CF families, absorbing energetic, joyful support, then reflecting it back to their world.

There's an intensity present, also.  An intensity focused on raising research money for the CF Foundation, because as I understand it, they are the ones financing drug studies.  The more money they have, the more research they finance.  Simple.

So we attend Great Strides for relationships and for money.  And we will until there's no more need for research.  *From my mouth to God's ears!*

Walking,
Allison



P.S. ~ Nice doc explaining amazing drug study here!