I’ll be honest. I have been avoiding my website. 2020 has been a rough year for us all and I did not want to write about it.
Not anymore. Desert Bus is coming up and that means there is something good to write about. And I mean truly GOOD. This event raises funds for a GOOD cause. It brings together a positive, kind, and GOOD community online. Personal stories are shared, stories of GOOD people helping each other. There is humor and GOOD entertainment. We all need more of this in our lives.
Desert Bus for Hope 2019. Photo by Kolin Toney
If you are not familiar with Desert Bus for Hope (literally the most written about event on my site), it is a live-streaming charity event that happens in November. Through internet dance, jokes and absurdity it raises funds for charity. Specifically, Child’s Play Charity and you can read on their website they are “a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in our network of over 185 hospitals worldwideâ€.
Sounds like a pretty great cause to me.
This charity is close to my heart as it has a connection to my past. I was a sick kid in a hospital. My life was made better because someone donated a video game console and games. Now I get to give back, I get to pay it forward. I can make a difference for a kid who is having a difficult time, and so can you.
My 6th Grade School Photo
There are a lot of things going on in the world, there are many causes to be supported. But if you want to, tune-in, tell a friend, throw in a couple of bucks. We will be live streaming at DesertBus.org starting Friday, November 13th, at 10am PST. I can only speak for myself, but consciously adding some good to this world is exactly what I need right now. Join me?
Starting with a pre-show on Friday and going until FOREVER (No, seriously, when does this thing end? It could legitimately go on forever), Liz will be in Canada Desert Bussing with the best of them. She will be producing the Prime Time segments (6-10pm Pacific each night) as well as the pre-show event on Friday from 6:30-8:00pm Pacific.
For those unfamiliar, Desert Bus For Hope is an online charity event where individuals play the game “Desert Bus” and do other various silly tasks while livestreaming 24 hours a day. This continues until donations run out. Last year it went for over 6 days and raised over $440,000.
Desert Bus raises money for Child’s Play, an organization that provides toys and games to over 70 childrens’ hospitals. This organization is very near and dear to Liz’s heart, and she wrote a fantastic post about it a couple years ago.
Cheer Liz and the entire Desert Bus team on by visiting desertbus.org. We can’t wait to see what will happen this year!
For the next few days I will be in Victoria helping out with Desert Bus for Hope. This is a fun and inspiring event, a charity video game marathon, streaming online and raising money for Child’s Play Charity. Child’s Play is “dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in… over 70 hospitals worldwideâ€.
This charity has a special place in my heart. Many people know that I play video games, but what most people don’t know is that I starting playing video games when I was eleven years old and in isolation at the Seattle Children’s Hospital. When I was eleven, I had cancer.
Me and my father on his birthday. Jan 1993
I always have to start this story by telling everyone that “I’m fine now.†And it’s true, I am cancer free for nearly twenty years now.
I don’t tell this story often, not because I have an issue with it, but because it’s not really something that comes up in conversation all that often. However, I should note that it’s not an easy story to tell at times. I have strong emotions when it comes to sick kids in hospitals, and I had to pause several times when writing this post as I fought back tears.
With Desert Bus coming up, I thought this would be a good time to tell my story. I realize now that I have so much more to say about this than this one post will allow, so the whole story is something to be told another day.
My school photo, Sept 1992
What I do want to tell you is that from my personal experience, I can confirm that donated toys and games and the work of charities like Child’s Play makes a difference in the quality of life for sick kids.
My treatment lasted about eight months, with six months of chemotherapy and two months of radiation. During this time, if I ever was sick with a fever or had a low white blood cell count I had to go to the hospital, which usually meant being admitted for a week or more. If you have no white blood cells (those are the kickass cells in your blood that fight sickness) you don’t do so well being surrounded by sick patients in a hospital. If I was in the hospital, it meant I was in isolation.
The word ‘isolation’ sounds pretty lonely, and it is. I mean, you get a room, TV, and bathroom to yourself, which is pretty sweet, but it’s still lonely. My family is very supportive, but even they couldn’t be in the hospital all the time. So I spent many hours on my own. I was sick, in pain, and in a hospital (with weird hospital smells). It kind of sucked…a lot.
One day, things went from suck to awesome. A nurse opened my door and wheeled in this large mobile unit with a TV and video game console. I had never really played any video games up to that point, this moment was life changing. You see, someone had donated a TV, a Super Nintendo (SNES) and video
A rare photo of me strapped to the table for radiation treatment.
games. I imagine love at first sight, true love and all that is quite similar to the moment I saw that mobile entertainment unit of awesome wheeled into my little room. The smell of overly sterilized walls, linens and food was replaced by the smell of excitement and anticipation. (Everything is WAY more dramatic when you’re a kid with a lot of time on your hands)
I learned how to play Super Mario Bros. sitting in my bed, hooked up to IVs and it changed everything. For a few hours of my day I was no longer sick, bald, and isolated, I was riding an egg laying dinosaur named Yoshi on a mission to save a princess and all of Dinosaur Land from the evil Bowser! I was no longer pale and weak— with a feather I could FLY!
I had access to movies and television, but this was better. This was more than just watching. In this world, I was a part of the story, I was in the story. I was fighting Bowser. It was me who learned to fly using a feather and donning a cape. Many times I would die and have to try again, and after so many attempts, I’d hit that one time where I made it… it was awesome. I had achieved! I had succeeded. I had learned something new. It’s that feeling of accomplishment that is so simple and so meaningful to someone so weak and ill. And that’s the thing. For those hours, I wasn’t sick. I was just a kid, playing video games and having a blast.
If you are looking for a charity to support, a way to help improve a sick child’s life, or to simply be a part of a good cause, I recommend supporting Child’s Play Charity. I will be doing my part the next few days with Desert Bus for Hope. They will be streaming live online 24hrs a day until donations run out. Tune in to donate, participate in the auctions, or just watch us be silly as we entertain for the cause. Log in, say hi, I’ll even do a silly dance for a fee. Don’t worry, I only dance for money if it’s for a good cause. And this certainly is.
