Jealousy Over The Ice Bucket ALS Challenge
Perhaps you've seen the Ice Bucket Challenge thing that's raising money and awareness for ALS? Yeah, me too. Maybe 100 times by now.
So here's the basics on this thing. One year ago at the time, ALS foundations had raised a grand total of about $2 million for their cause. In the world of disease fundraising, that's nothing.
This challenge has now raised more than $22 million. Everywhere you go people are talking about this. Awareness is through the roof.
Good for them. Anything that can help get rid of this horrible disease is welcome.
I belong to a few Parkinson's communities. While most people are supportive of the challenge, I've seen some comments asking how we can get that kind of publicity for Parkinson's reasearch and awareness.
The answer is you probably can't. Just be happy for what you have and also be happy for others getting their 15 minutes of fame.
Here's why you can do this.
If that's not enough, how about him?
And just to rub it in, what about her?
Three major names in the worlds of sports, music and television/movies have Parkinson's. How much more awareness can you get?
Fox has a foundation that has raised more than $800 million for Parkinson's research (the numbers vary greatly depending on the source). Ali also has a foundation that raises a great deal of money. So let's not begrudge another group finally making some much needed cash.
You need another reason not to be jealous...sure why not. As awful and lifechanging as Parkinson's is, I doubt any of us is willing to trade lives with an ALS patient. There's no cure and it's a death sentence in an excrutiating painful way.
When I told my brother about having Parkinson's, one of his first comments was, "Could be worse. At least it's not ALS."
There's a big four in the neurological disease world. There's ALS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and MS.
For years there was thought that there was no connection between the diseases. That line of thinking is changing. My guess is within ten years we'll find all sorts of things in common among these diseases. If you aren't supportive now, it's going to be time to get on the bandwagon soon.
So I know you're tired of seeing cold water dumped on people's heads. During the five minutes it took to read this, you multi-taskers have found another 50 videos.
But really...anytime a bucket of ice water can be dumped on this guy, how bad can it be?