Sunday, February 25, 2007

Hello all. sorry for the delay in me writing. I hope everyone is doing well and keeping healthy. We had a great weekend here at the Johnson Household. Friday we had dinner at Phil and Lena's with 11 adults (minus Justin) and 9 kids. Needless to say it was fun, but a little crazy. On Saturday, I went to play golf (Phil, Rob, and Brian were in my foursome) and Addi and Christi met Lena and Kelly in the park, along with all the kids. I came home and chatted with Christi and Tracia while Addi was asleep for her afternoon nap. Then we all went to dinner and had a grat time at Birkdale Village. Sunday is a lazy day, although I am flying to OH later this afternoon for business.

We have a busy week ahead. I will not be back until Monday night, and I have a class. We leave on Thursday morning for HI, and will be getting back on the 8th. On the 9th, I am hosting an ACC Tournament Challenge for some of the boys. It last all weekend. We will be busy, biut having a lot of fun.

I wanted to give an update on Addi's Cure Dinner. It really was a huge success. Addi's Cure cleared after expenses a little over $12,000 for the evening. We did have one really big donation, but even if we excluded that, we still would have been over $7,000. Our goal was $5,000. I think it was a lot of fun, and we should do things like that more often, not just for charity. Robin, Lena, Rachel, Anna, Lauren, Candace, and Amy really did a great job with this dinner. I will have to be honest, I did not do anything, it was Christi and all the girls that did such a great job. There were over 180 people there, so it was a huge sucess in creating awareness and raising money. Here is a money update:

2006, we rasied $75,236.06. We gave a check for $37,500 to Duke, and $37,736.06 went into the Addi's Cure growth account. The interest from this money will be swept at the end of the year and will be given to Duke as well.
2007, so far this year we have rasied $21,405.57. At the end of the year, we will give half of this to Duke and the rest will go into the Addi's Cure account.

I also thought it may be wise to discuss our goals for Addi's Cure again. We would like to have $1,000,000 in the Addi's Cure account earning interest for cancer research. I know this is a lofty goal, but i think we can do it over time. If we get to this point, we will have also given $1,000,000 as well. (Half and Half formula.) Imagine, a small charity like us would have given almost half of what the US goverment gave in 2005 total. (2.1 million) That is a shame, but more the reason why we have to give. Everyone has done such a great job.

Masters update - I will finish in April. My final paper will be on Addi's Cure. I will keep you posted.

Last but not least, I wanted to give an update on my condition. As Christi posted earlier, I did have some growth. Dr. Crawford did say my tumors are still lower than when I first enrolled at Duke, but he wanted to try find the right formula for me, and maybe Tarceva alone was not going to cut it. We added Avastin. I take it every three weeks at Duke, just like chemo. In fact it is a form of chemo. It took 90 minutes the first time, but I took it very well. The next time they will give me the dose in 60 minutes. I feel the same and still have not felt bad. I am excited about this oppurtunity to see what this drug can do.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

May God bless you, today and always, for thinking of the future well being of so many others, while you fight your own battle with lung cancer...