ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: Accepted!

If you’re on social media, you’ve seen videos the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.  It was spreading so quickly through my friends that I knew it was coming for us soon.  While at dinner with my friend tonight she said she was glad she hasn’t been nominated yet (I mean, who wants to pour ice water on their heads).  She said (as I mentioned in the video), I won’t nominate you, if you don’t nominate me.  Lo and I hadn’t even pulled out of the parking lot after dinner when she called.  She said she just got nominated and she’s going back on her word and nominating us!  I yelled at her, but accepted my fate, assuming that she’d do the challenge tomorrow, and then I’d be able to do it on Saturday – maybe it’ll be hot and sunny (within 24 hours).  Shortly after we got home, she and her husband did their videos and challenged us…so we had until Friday night to do ours.  And we had plans after work on Friday.  So we went out in the cold (72 degrees), dark night to dump ice water on our head (poor us).  We will also be donating to alsa.org, but the website was down tonight – which means they are getting lots of traffic/donations!

I read a biography about Lou Gehrig when I was in elementary or middle school and remember it really making an impression on me – how scary it must be to lose control of your body slowly, but permanently.  It’s been 73 years since he died, and while there’s been some progress in treatments, it’s just not enough.  And other than people thinking of it as “Lou Gehrig’s disease”, you just don’t hear much about it.  As silly as this challenge seems, it’s working – over $41.8 million has been donated so far, and there’s so much more awareness – with whole families completing the challenge.  Hopefully there’s lots of of dinner table dialogue about the disease…maybe one of the kids or teens who does the challenge will someday be instrumental in finding a cure.  While I hope the cure comes more quickly, it’s probably going to take more time, but all of this money and awareness is going to certainly help.

I nominated all of my sisters…hopefully they’ll all take part – even if they are pissed about it!

Here’s the video…