Mar. 13: In which I ask for stuff

Apologies in advance, but I need stuff and I’m turning to you, my adoring public of four, to help me out.

My sister Kathy is running in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Seattle Marathon & Half Marathon on June 26 as a member of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) Team In Training. Her goal is to raise $4,100 for research toward a cure, and after just a few days she’s already 31 percent there! Can you help? Here’s her information and donation page. Even a small donation can make a difference. Thank you!

My post last night detailed the results of my most recent CT, in which we found my tumor has shrunk a very small amount since January. I was disappointed not to see a bigger change, but it just means I have to fight a little harder. And to fight harder, I’m gonna need your help.

I saw this on another blog and think it’s a fabulous idea. A bunch of friends of this guy with cancer took pictures of themselves giving cancer the finger, and someone made it into a big poster for him. Is that the coolest? I want something similar, but as I said the other day, I want it to be something more applicable to my own experience with cancer. This is not to suggest cancer deserves less than “the finger;” in fact, I think it doesn’t get “the finger” enough. But I’m all for something I can proudly display for the rest of my life—which, I am convinced, is going to be longer than any of you probably think I deserve.

Here are the photo ideas that have been suggested to me in blog comments, emails, and Facebook:

• You, getting a tattoo of me
• You, eating Pop Rocks—which we all know are the key to destroying cancer
• You, IV pole dancing
• You, mooning cancer
• You, crossing your fingers and any other limbs you can manage to cross
• You, getting a Brazilian bikini wax—preferably while eating Pop Rocks
• You, getting chemotherapy just to support me oh my word you are completely insane

I think the key to this is that everyone is doing the same thing in the photos—uniting to show cancer once and for all who’s boss. So, because I’m the cancer girl, I’m going to make a wish™.

This is what I wish from you: a picture of you “dancing” around a pole. I know not everyone has immediate access to an IV pole, but if you can wrap your leg around a power pole, light post, tree, floor lamp, or that stripper pole we all know you have in your bedroom, you’ve got it made. Add your own little flair to it—hint: I love sequins!—and I’ll giggle with cancer-fighting glee. Or add your friends, your pets, your family, whatever… it’s all good. Please keep things PG-13.

Email your full-resolution photos to me at jennifer-at-manullang-dot-com. If you can include the names of any additional people in your photo, awesome. That’ll help me remember who kicked cancer for me when my great-great-great grandchildren ask why I have a ratty old poster of crazy looking people dancing around giant antennae.

Here are the pole dancing photos I’ve collected thus far:

 Kim Felkley Nelson, who started the whole IV pole dancing craze (January 2010)

 Lisa Ross Nicholson, me, and April Knudson Jordan (February 2010)

 

As you can see, it’s not too difficult to look incredibly sexy while dancing around a pole, whether by yourself or in a group of delightful people. Don’t you want to look this sexy, too? Don’t you want to be remembered a hunnert years from now as someone who helped a friend fight cancer? (The answer is “yes.” The ONLY answer is “yes.”)

I await your email attachments. I may have to recruit some friends to strong-arm you into doing this—I nominate Kim F’n and Sunshine—and believe me, I’m not going to let this one go. (Keep in mind, I once saw Kim carry a dorm refrigerator under each arm—she’s scary-strong.) Please, please, please play along. I’ll be forever indebted to you.