It’s been a crazy few weeks, friends. I’ve moved to a new living situation, which is working out quite nicely, and I’ve been continuing with my weight loss journey through Weight Watchers and keeping track of my activity through my FitBit Surge. To date, I’ve lost 26.8 pounds and I’m still going.
I am a little disappointed in myself because my walking frenzy has slowed, partially due to moving to a new neighborhood, partially because of my work schedule, but mostly, if I’m being 100% honest with you, because I got a new TV and I’ve been enjoying that a little more than I probably should. I’m making a conscious effort to nip that habit in the bud and get back to being active, but in the meantime I’m continuing to track my food and, consequently, I’m continuing to shrink. The photo below will give you an idea of where I am and where I came from. The photo on the left is from last May and the one on the right was this morning. Same shirt, different body. It’s exciting!!
The last couple of weeks have become a bit more challenging, though, because the more weight you lose, the less you’re able to eat in order to continue to lose weight. I mean, it makes sense – I can’t eat the same amount of food I was eating 20 pounds ago and expect to continue to lose weight – but just because it makes sense, that doesn’t mean it makes it easier. Also, because I’ve not been walking as much, I find I’m going back to old habits of eating out of boredom. Luckily I don’t keep a whole lot of food in the house, so I’ve just had to get over it, but the temptation is getting to be too much sometimes.
So…in an attempt to motivate me to walk more and, just to be a good human being and hopefully make a difference while I’m walking, I have signed up to walk with the Walt Disney World VoluntEARS team in the 2016 AIDS Walk Orlando – a charity event to benefit Hope and Help Center of Central Florida.
And here’s where I ask you for money.
I ask you to consider sponsoring me in this walk. The minimum donation is $5, but you can donate as much as you’d like above that. And! The Walt Disney Company will match your donation of $25 or more. I think that’s pretty awesome.
Why are we doing this event and where would your money go? Well…according to the website:
All money raised goes to Hope and Help’s client-centered services, which cover the full continuum from HIV prevention to treatment.
In Florida, 15% of all new HIV infections reported among females in 2012 were under the age of 25.
Of those persons living with HIV disease in Florida, 49% are black, 29% are white and 20% are Hispanic. Men represent 70% of the cases. Persons over the age of 45 years represent 60%.
Approximately 18% of individuals living with HIV/AIDS are unaware of their diagnosis.
1 in 4 new cases of HIV are among those ages 13 – 24.
In 2014, Hope and Help Center administered 5,477 HIV tests to our Central Florida neighbors.
Hope and Help Center reaches many underserved high risk areas by use of mobile testing units.
Hope and Help served over 5,000 clients last year. We provide many services, with many of our clients requiring more than one service.
Hope and Help Center is the largest AIDS Service Organization in Central Florida, with 7 locations throughout Seminole, Orange and Osceola counties.
There are 12,500 of our Central Florida neighbors living with HIV/AIDS.
I would venture to say that each and every one of us knows someone who has HIV or AIDS, or someone who has lost someone dear to them to the disease, whether we realize it or not. Please consider donating to this worthy cause. If you’d like to sponsor me, please visit www.AIDSWalkOrlando.org. Next to “Donation Type,” choose “Donate to an Individual” and find my name on the list. Again, if you donate $25 or more, The Walt Disney Company will match your donation!
DeQuina Moore: Singer, Actress, Dancer, Author and Amazing Human Being.
I have to take a second to brag on my amazing friend, DeQuina Moore. Last week I challenged her to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and, rather than pour iced water on her head, she opted to make a donation to ALSA.org. Her friends and family, however, raised their voices in solidarity and finally convinced her to go ahead and make a video.
Even though I know she hated to do it, she finally did the ice bucket challenge tonight, but with her own twist. Rather than make it about ALS (remember, she already donated to them), she chose to bring awareness and donate to the Sickle Cell Disease Association in honor of some of her family members who suffer from the disease.
What is sickle cell disease? That’s a good question. To be honest, I didn’t really know a whole lot about it myself, but isn’t that the point of these videos…? To make people ask questions and do research and learn about these things? So here we go:
According to the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America’s website, Sickle Cell Disease (sometimes called Sickle Cell Anemia) is an inherited blood disease that affects red blood cells. The cells mostly contain an abnormal type of hemoglobin that causes the red blood cells to become sickle-shaped, which makes it difficult for the blood cells to flow through small blood vessels. As we all know, if blood doesn’t get to our body tissue, that tissue doesn’t get oxygen and it becomes damaged.
Sickle cells have a lifespan that is about 1/10 that of normal, healthy blood cells. When those sickle cells are destroyed by the body, it leads to anemia, jaundice and the formation of gallstones. When the blood vessels become clogged or blocked by sickle cells, there can be lung damage, pain in the chest, arms, legs and abdomen, organ damage and it could lead to a stroke. Also, because of sickle cell-related damage to the spleen, the people who suffer from this disease – especially kids – are more prone to bacterial infections.
There are treatments to help with the symptoms, including blood transfusions (which can lead to other issues) that can help reduce the risk of stroke, but there currently is no cure for sickle cell disease.
It is estimated that 70,000 people in the United States suffer from sickle cell disease with approximately 1,000 cases in newborns each year. The life expectancy for patients with sickle cell disease is in the mid-40’s, which is apparently an improvement over what it used to be.
Contrary to popular belief, it does not only affect people of African descent. It is also present in Portuguese, Spanish, French Corsicans, Sardinians, Sicilians, mainland Italians, Greeks, Turks and Cypriots and also appears in Middle Eastern countries and Asia.
So now you – well, we – know. In support of DeQuina and her family, I have made a donation to the SCDAA and hope that you will consider doing the same. I know – a lot of people have been asking for charitable donations lately, but at least consider it and, if nothing else, take the time to educate yourself about this disease.
And, while you’re at it, check out DeQuina’s website. Listen to that glorious voice. Order her book, “Under His Watch: 100 Reasons to Re-Elect & Remember President Barack Obama.” Follow her on Twitter: @DeQuinaMoore. Enjoy this video, which she made out on the road with some of our Flashdance friends. She is one the most beautiful people I’ve ever known, inside and out. See if you don’t fall in love with her, too.
Well. It happened. I was challenged yesterday to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Considering my last entry, I felt like it was time to put up or shut up, so I did my challenge in my shower at the hotel here in Des Moines.
Here’s the video. Please watch. Please donate. Please forgive me for muddling the Broadway Cares section of the video – it was all very stream-of-consciousness and I was coming up with things to say on the spot, so I may have left a word or two out here and there. To be honest, I was proud of myself for being as “with it” as I was, considering I planned the whole thing out in less than 5 minutes.
Again, here are the links if you’d like to make a donation:
Well, not my head – at least not yet…I keep waiting to be nominated.
As I’m sure many of you have seen or even experienced, there is an internet craze going around of dumping a bucket of iced water on your head to raise awareness and money for the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association. While I have found the videos to be quite entertaining and funny, apparently a few people are sick of seeing them and fundamentally disagree with what they’re intended to do. Others have taken issue with the wasted water being dumped over people’s heads because of the drought out west and the millions of people without fresh drinking water around the world. I think those people have valid concerns, but I also think this challenge has done a lot of good, as well.
To the others, though, who are just bored with the videos, my response is this: Get over yourselves. If you don’t want to watch the videos, don’t click on them! It’s that simple. Some people have also expressed that this is simply a gimmick for ALS to raise money. To those people I posit this: Isn’t that what Broadway Bares is? (For those of you who don’t know, Broadway Bares is a bunch of Broadway singers and dancers stripping to raise money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS). Ironically (and sadly), many of the dissenters have actually performed in Broadway Bares.
In the defense of the people I know who have taken the ice bucket challenge in California, including many celebrities, I have seen them standing in their gardens or in or near their swimming pools when they douse themselves so that the water at least gets used to water plants or goes back into their pools. (If people are going to be upset about folks dumping a bucket of water on their heads, wouldn’t their outrage be better served focusing on those people in drought-stricken California who have gigantic pools of water in their back yards or the 22 million gallons of water used in the water fountain show in front of the Bellagio in Las Vegas – or, to be completely fair – the 15 million gallons used in Disney’s “World of Color” show? Isn’t that a bigger issue? But I digress…) That being said, I can’t deny that there are many people around the world who need clean water to drink. There is a link at the bottom of this entry if you’d like to donate to charity: water.
When the ice bucket challenge began, my initial understanding of the challenge was that if you were “nominated” to take the challenge, you had 24 hours to either pay $100 to ALSA or videotape yourself dumping a bucket of iced water on your head and post it online. You could then nominate 3 people to do the same. Many people chose to just go with the iced water and I think that’s where so many people were getting upset – if everyone dumped water on their heads, who was actually donating money to the cause? Well, apparently someone was donating – ALSA has raised over $20 million in a month. Many people chose to donate and do the bucket challenge, including a lot of high-profile celebrities. Jimmy Fallon and his team at the Tonight Show did it. Ty Burrell from “Modern Family” has done it. Ben Affleck, Chris Pratt, Taylor Swift, Ricky Martin, Justin Timberlake, Tyler Perry, Lebron James, Jack Black, Matt Lauer, Gwen Stefani, Ashton Kutcher and Wilmer Valderrama, James Franco, Michael Bublé, the entire cast of “Grey’s Anatomy” and even Ms. Oprah Winfrey herself have taken the challenge in what is, honestly, one of the funniest videos I’ve ever seen.
“But what’s the point of all this tomfoolery?,” you ask? Well…to not only raise money, but also to raise awareness about Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or what we Americans call Lou Gehrig’s Disease. According to ASLA’s website, ALS is a “progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.”
In laymen’s terms, what does that mean? According to MDA.org, it means your muscles weaken, especially involving the arms and legs, speech, swallowing or breathing – basically all of your voluntary muscles. Hearing, vision and your sense of touch is not generally affected, so it means you can see and hear what’s going on around you, but you can’t communicate because the muscles that allow you to speak have atrophied. Some with ALS suffer from uncontrollable twitching and/or painful muscles cramps. Many display changes in character and behavior and a few suffer from pseudobulbar effect, or uncontrollable bouts of laughing or crying which are more associated with the disease than the actual corresponding emotions of happiness or sadness. It can affect anyone of any age, but it tends to show up in middle age (40-70 years) and the life expectancy is 2-5 years after diagnosis.
ALS is known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease because on July 4, 1939, New York Yankee Lou Gehrig, also known as the Iron Horse of Baseball, stood before a crowd of 62,000 people to announce that he would be retiring from baseball because just a few days earlier he’d been diagnosed with ALS, which most people had never heard of at the time. Just two years later he died of the disease. Seventy-five years later, there is still no cure for Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
Lou Gehrig
I know many people who have taken the challenge. One of the cast members of our show chose not to do the ice bucket challenge, but posted a video of himself chugging a beer and announcing that he’d donated to 4 charities of his choosing, including the ALSA. Many people have chosen to just donate money, as I have, and I haven’t even been nominated to do the ice bucket challenge. I’m not saying this to brag on myself – I couldn’t donate much, and I certainly wish I could donate to more organizations – but the point is that I probably wouldn’t have donated to their organization if I hadn’t seen these videos because I wasn’t really aware of it. Now I am aware, and here I am devoting an entire blog entry to the subject and hopefully now you know a little bit about it, too.
There are many organizations and charities that could use your help. Please consider donating either your money or time to a charitable organization today, whether you choose to dump a bucket of iced water on your head or strip to your skivvies or not. In addition to my donation to ALSA, I have also made a donation to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline in memory of Robin Williams. To make a donation to ALSA, click here. To make a donation to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, click here. To donate to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, click here. To donate to charity: water, click here.
Confessions of a Merch Whore 