Back in early March, I posted a diary asking for help with a GoFundme campaign. Rather than retype my explanation, I’ll copy and paste a bit from that original diary:
After three years battling it (literally, this week is the third anniversary of my diagnosis), my cancer finally has the upper hand and has become resistant to I.V. chemotherapy. The remaining options (oral drugs) might, at best, buy me a few extra months in all probability. At this point the doctors aren’t committing to any estimates as to how much time I’ve got.
As some of you know, I’m a teacher librarian (or, at least, I was, until I applied for disability in December). I would very much like to be able to purchase a new book for each student at our elementary school (it’s a pre-K — 4th grade elementary). I’ve been in contact with Scholastic Books, explained my situation and my wish, and they have provided me a very good quote — about half of what I’d expected.
I have started a GoFundMe to raise the funds to do this, but so far it has not taken off. Initially, before I’d gotten the quote from Scholastic, I’d set the amount at $5,000 but have reduced it to $2,000 now that the quote came in so much lower than I’d expected.
I’m hoping some Kossacks might be willing to kick in some funds to help me get to my goal.
Ok, so that’s the intro. Here’s the update, first on the GoFundMe, and then on me.
The GoFundMe, with the help of many Kossacks (THANK YOU ALL!) blew past my goal in about two hours, and between your help and the help of other family and friends, I ended up with about $7,000 in the pot! That’s $5,000 past my original $2,000 goal!
To be blunt: WOW!
The Scholastic books for my elementary school’s students arrived and were distributed and this week I received a number of handmade thank you cards, and the principal forwarded some photos that some of the teachers took of the students with their new books. Here are some photos:
That’s not all the classes, of course, but a few of the early grade classes. Not everyone took pictures. Overall, those who contributed helped get books into the hands of 475 K-4 students! Give yourself a pat on the back!
But, you ask, what about the other $5,000? Where did that go? I’m glad you asked!
I posted to a listserv for school librarians in my state, explaining the GoFundMe and that I had a lot of excess funds. I asked that anyone with a school library that was poorly funded or otherwise in great need of additional funding to fill out a Google Form I created and I would select some libraries to support with the rest of the funds.
In the end, I selected 3 schools. One was a rural school district with literally zero annual budget, dependent entirely on their book fair for funds.
Another was another rural school that was in a similar situation — they did get a small (~$500) budget from the district but otherwise the book fair was their main source of funding.
The third was an inner city elementary school that actually had decent funding, but because so many of the families in the district were very low income, few students could afford to pay for lost or damaged books, so the library usually just ate the loss. This of course nullified a sizable chunk of their budget because it had to be used to replace those books, so I used the remainder of the funds in an effort to let them catch up on those losses.
So, y’all did good. Take a moment to be proud of yourselves and bask in the warmth of a job well done. And I cannot possibly thank you all enough for your help and support with this project.
Speaking of me, how am I doing, with it coming up on 2 months since the news that I had either 2-3 months or perhaps as much as 6 months, depending on who you asked on my oncology team? Again, I’m glad you asked!
Doing just dandy (within a certain definition of dandy, of course), thank you. Often tired, and I wear out quickly if I do any type of physical activity or work, but that’s been the case for months now. Frankly, my symptoms have held pretty steady. Touch of jaundice visible in my eyes if you look closely in the right light, but all else is good. I’ve been told by my oncology PA that when the end finally does come, the decline will probably be fairly rapid, happening over a matter of days or a week or so.
Now if I can just manage to not “off” myself accidentally, I’ll be good. A few months ago, I fell on the basement stairs (no dizziness or such, just naturally clumsiness and taking a bad step) and fractured a couple of ribs. And not quite two weeks ago, while my wife and I were doing some reorganizing of our basement, my wife called me over to look at some photos she’d found in a box. On the way over, I caught my foot on the corner of another box and went down like a fir tree in a logging district.
That would have been bad enough on it’s own, but my wife was sitting in a metal folding chair, and the back of that caught me right about eyebrow level on my way down to the concrete floor. I think I know what being punched by Mike Tyson feels like now, it rang my chimes pretty good. Initially, I thought I’d broken my nose, but luckily that wasn’t the case. After a few minutes of resting on the floor and holding tissues to the cut I’d opened up on my forehead, I was back on my feet and more or less functional again, though Mrs. Witgren was still in panic mode and wanted to take me to the ER or at least a walk in clinic.
I refused to go and told her she needs to remember I grew up on an Iowa farm in the 70’s and 80’s with two older brothers. For me, this was a Tuesday growing up. ;) Yeah, there’s a reason women live longer than men. :)
Anyway, enough chatter. TL;DR for the diary: GoFundMe wildly successful, and I’m doing fine.
See y’all later, folks! Stay curious!