Oh no, not again...

Emru Townsend has been writing about animation for about as long as I have. Maybe longer. He's an amazing, erudite guy with an interesting take on the whole scene. And now he's battling a blood cancer. He has AML, a form of leukemia that took a friend of mine about three weeks ago. My husband Richie Hass lost his battle with another blood cancer, multiple myeloma, a little more than a week ago.

This is getting way old way quick. Unfortunately because of the strong chance that blood cancer is exacerbated, if not caused, by environmental pollution, we're going to see a lot more of our friends fall to these horrible diseases. These cancers either used to be old people's cancers, or affect the young and old and ignore people in the prime of their lives. Now they are affecting people throughout their lifespans.

What can a bunch of cartoon geeks out there in cyberspace do about this?

1.) If you can give blood, DO. There are likely a lot of people suffering from blood cancers in your hometown who need that blood badly.

2.) Get yourself tissue-typed for bone marrow donation. Emru Townsend does not have a family match, so he has to find a person unrelated to himself with a tissue type match. This is made harder by his ethnicity. Details are on his site. Again, if you can't give blood because of medical reasons you will probably be unable to donate bone marrow, but if you can, you can literally save a life.

3.) Donate money, time or both to some very deserving blood cancer related charities, which are either funding research, helping patients, or both.
Here are some links:
Leukemia and Lymphoma Society: http://www.lls.org/
International Myeloma Foundation: http://www.myeloma.org
ThinkCure (City of Hope and LA Children's Hospital) http://www.thinkcure.org/

4.) Keep your eye on this URL: http://bloodcancersbite.msgeek.net/. There's a placeholder there now but I'm working on getting some projects going there. I'm looking to make 'em fun as well as have them help raise funds for research and for helping patients.