Can You Stand One More?
Written: Aug 25 '01
The Bottom Line
Revealed in review.
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I’d like to start by making a promise to everyone. Just because I’ve discussed cancer in my RID Lice Killing Shampoo review, also touched upon it in my latest General Epinions’ Comments editorial, and am now covering cancer in even more detail in this particular web site review, does NOT mean I’ve decided to become a one-trick wonder!
The last thing I want is to be reduced in people’s eyes to ‘that dude with cancer’. On the other hand, I don’t want to brush the subject aside, since it will eventually affect each and every one of us or a loved one. So what you are about to read consists of a review of the EndCancerNow.com web site , followed by my thoughts on why we need to End Cancer Now, including the update on my cancer situation that so many of you have been asking for. It’s important to realize that the ‘old’ Hard-To-Please is still here and hoping you agree that after nearly two years of levity, I’m entitled to thirty days of total seriousness. (Well, maybe not total.)
EndCancerNow.com is a privately owned web site dedicated to raising money for cancer research.
Upon accessing the site, you are immediately hit with a sobering statistic: This year about 563,100 Americans are expected to die of cancer, more than 1,500 people a day, more than one per minute.
Your eyes are then drawn to a big square blue button and you are prompted to ‘click on this button to make a free donation to cancer research through the American Cancer Society’. The site adds that you can donate once a day and that it’s paid for by their sponsors. And that’s about it for their homepage. Not exactly packed with information, is it?
I still had plenty of unanswered questions: Who are these mysterious sponsors? Why are they donating just because I click on a blue box? How many dollars are they kicking in for each click? Obviously it was time to check out the other links.
I figured “Donation Totals” would be a logical place to start. The site proclaimed that EndCancerNow.com began on December 11, 1999 and as of June 30, 2001, there have been nearly three million “free donations” from web site visitors. Wow- I was really impressed! But then I learned the eighteen-month total in actual dollars. The good news is that a full 95% of the sponsor’s donation goes directly to fund cancer research. The bad news is that the pay rate is 0.5 cents per visitor per day! (Don’t get any bright ideas Epinions!) In other words, just slightly over $13,000 has been raised in all this time.
Now don’t get me wrong- donations are always welcome and I’m sure that the charitable clickers take pride in clicking in their fifteen cents worth of donations each month. But let’s face reality- the three million donators took a year and a half to raise an amount that would not even come close to covering my first week of hospital bills.
The FAQ link provided me with a few more tidbits of information. Since I respect your intelligence, I’m going to condense their three pages of somewhat patronizing discussion down to the amount of space it should have been covered in.
It takes the site over a thousand words to inform you of gems of knowledge such as:
(Question 1) “When I click the ‘Donate for Free’ button, will it cost me anything?”
Their answer: ”When you click the ‘Donate for Free’ button this is recorded by our computer server , which also adds your donation to the day’s total and displays the ‘Thank you for your donation’ page. This page shows the name of the sponsor(s) paying for your donation. There is absolutely no charge to you for the donations- it is fully paid for by the sponsors.”
My answer: ”Which part of free don’t you understand, idiot?”
The bottom line on EndCancerNow.com is that donating to cancer research is of course a noble and worthwhile cause. But I believe there are a lot more efficient ways to accomplish the same goal. Rather than donate a half-cent per day to two private individuals who only pass on 95% of it to cancer research, why not write a real check to an organization you’ve researched and trust? If you’re into clicking on extremely cheap rewards, try punching that stupid monkey- at least it lets you click until your thumbs cramp up.
*Update as of 8/25 @ 8p.m.: I wrote everything preceding this update yesterday afternoon. I just now went to EndCancerNow.com because I realized I forgot to list the sponsors. Much to my shock, here is the message I received tonight:
We regret that EndCancerNow.com has ceased operations due to the lack of sponsors during this e-economy downturn. We appreciate your support! Please continue to donate to research through your local chapter of the American Cancer Society.
Son of a biitch! I’m either the smartest dude on the site by writing a bad recommendation about a site which then folds within 24 hours or the unluckiest b@stard in the world by spending hours researching and writing about a site which then disappears the next day!
END CANCER NOW
The site review of EndCancerNow is now over, but those interested in my personal battle to End Cancer Now may continue on…
I should preface this by pointing out that I am writing this section out in longhand as I lay in my hospital bed undergoing an eight-hour blood transfusion. It is a very extraordinary feeling to watch the drip-drip-drip of a stranger’s blood slowly flowing into my veins. I can’t help but wonder about the person who was unselfish enough to make the decision to share two large bags of life’s most precious substance with a stranger. The nurse just informed me that I’m probably receiving blood from four people- that somehow makes me feel even better. With each passing day of the month since my diagnosis, I love my fellow humans more and more. My family, my friends, my co-workers, my Epinions’ community, my doctors, and even complete strangers have somehow all become much more special and valuable to my world.
My family is a rock. Even when faced with the cold, hard statistics that metastasized renal cell carcinoma has a shockingly low survival rate of 10% - 20%, they have almost managed to convince me that I will be in that minority group. I am trying desperately to believe the same thing since hundreds of people have told me that most of the battle is won in your mind- but my scientific mind has not yet allowed me to enjoy the same confidence of those who love me.
My friends have amazed me with their perseverance. Everyone wants to mow my yard, cook my meals, and even donate blood. Some of these people were the same ones who avoided me every time I needed help moving! The news seems to be spreading out in concentric circles. The first week was filled with phone calls from those I have associated with in the past year, The second week the calls poured in from those I’ve somehow drifted apart from in the last couple of years. The past two weeks have brought tearful reunions with best friends from past decades. The lesson is that life puts us all on separate paths and we gradually fade from each other’s lives as new commitments take priority over past relationships.
I had no idea that a serious illness could so powerfully reconnect people who cared about each other in the past. There is a strange new urgency now when we say to each other, “let’s get together for a barbeque”. Instead of the typical response of “how about sometime this Fall?”, we now say “how about this Saturday?”
Friends no longer tell me they’ll call me ‘sometime’- they say, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow afternoon.” Why does it take cancer for us to stop taking the special people in our lives for granted?
The Epinions’ community has shone like hundreds of bright stars in the black night to guide me through the darkness. I covered this subject fairly extensively in my prior review and that was only twelve hours after I broke the news. Now that it’s been over two weeks, your response has been even more overwhelming.
The 250+ comments and 250+ emails you’ve written were all written from the heart and full of love, prayers, advice, research, and humor. Many old-timers came out of Epinions’ retirement to console me and many members I’ve never had contact with cared enough to write me with supportive thoughts.
Because I spend on average 4 hours a day at various hospitals and oncologist’s offices and another few hours fighting insurance companies, my Epinions’ time must share time with lying around exhausted. Having said that, I am pleased to say that I’ve been able to respond to each of the first 125 emails I’ve received. I plan to continue answering in the order they were sent until I can no longer form a complete thought- although some would argue that my last complete thought was in early 2000 soon after I joined Epinions.
Speaking of being in the hospital, you should know that your dignity is the first thing you must leave behind. For example, I have had 38 pairs of hands thrust into my underwear in the first three weeks of August. That’s nearly twice as many as in the entire first six months of this year!
Even more humiliating was an experience on my first full day as an inpatient. I kept my ballcap on most of the time since it really set off my open-backed gown. When the gruff day nurse took over for the giggly night nurse, the first thing she commanded me to do was “take all future cr@ps into your hat”. I just stared blankly while poising my hand above my hat in case she made a mad grab for it. She must have realized my lack of comprehension because she repeated, “I mean it! You need to cr@p in your hat so we can take a sample.” The only retort I could think of quickly was “but your hat is so much bigger- wouldn’t that make more sense?” Nurse Cratchitt was not amused – she dragged me by the IV tube into the bathroom and shook a plastic top-hat/baby-toilet looking-thing in my face and scolded “This is your hat. Cr@p in here!” By that time I had already cr@pped in my gown, but at least now I knew what a ‘hat’ was.
I need to clear up a misconception I’ve seen bandied about the site. On several occasions, I’ve seen the words ‘inoperable’ and ‘terminal’ used to describe my cancer. While it is indeed “advanced” (Stage IV) and untreatable by traditional treatments of chemotherapy and radiation, let’s not give me an even bleaker diagnosis than I already have. I am having major surgery next Thursday to remove the largest tumor, my left kidney, and the affected lymph nodes – hopefully the surgeons won’t get wind of the fact that it’s ‘inoperable’.
After a one-week recovery period, I will be put on Interferon therapy. Interferon forces the body to produce its’ own cancer killing cells and will hopefully create millions of seek-and-destroy cancer killers to slow the growth of cancer in my lung and liver. I will learn to inject this myself daily and it will make me sick, but it’s unclear how many months it will take. There are two drawbacks to Interferon- it only helps a portion of the patients and (I’m not making this up…) it is such a powerful depressant that it triples the likelihood of its’ users commiting suicide.
So I hope it’s obvious that while I’ve indicated that some positive has come from having cancer (greater appreciation of life, closer relationships with loved ones, realizing the extent of man’s capacity for kindness), let me assure you that the negative is a major biitch which far outweighs any semblance of a plus.
If we don’t End Cancer Now, either you or a loved one will most certainly find yourself in the battle for your life someday (maybe sooner rather than later.) If you don’t visit your doctor when you first suspect there’s a problem- you are likely to regret it. My favorite excuses were “It will go away”, “It’s nothing major” and “Even if I wait until it gets bad, modern medicine can easily treat almost anything these days.” Now that I’ve proven my excuses to be stupid, please learn from ny mistakes and End Cancer Now.
I would be remiss if I did not give a big hug to the dozen of you who have sent donations. Having a level of comfort knowing that I can pay some bills has taken a lot of stress off of me. The twelve of you are my heroes.
I am really looking forward to the Hard-To-Please Love-Fest Write-Off, but I have a feeling that even I may stop writing in HTP style after reading the works of 50 different imitators.
In conclusion, I am currently in negotiation with Diverpam to set up an auction for my kidney. So many of you have pointed out the ironic connection between my alleged obsession with urine to my kidney cancer that I figure one of HTP’s kidneys will bring a pretty penny on the black market. However the auction may prove to be short-lived since Sordid-1 has threatened to out-bid all interested parties.
END CANCER NOW
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
Hard_To_Please
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Location: St. Louis, MO
Reviews written: 47
Trusted by: 741 members
About Me:
MARK IS MISSED!
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