Wednesday, March 26, 2008

ASHER'S DASHERS!!

Our friends, Tom & Jodi Collins, are doing a 5k run on May 10th at the Cleveland Zoo in support of the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, which their youngest son, Asher, has been diagnosed as having.
If you'd like to donate, click >here< to be taken to Jodi's page (she's marked as the Team Leader) to do so on-line!


Tom was the Best Man in our wedding, Harry was the Best Man in their wedding, and Tom is also Patrick's Godfather. We seem to have seen them more often when they lived in Las Vegas... but now that they are just 100 miles away it seems we never get everything sync'd up in order to visit - isn't that always the way? So, in *my* best way to support them, along with the donation we'll be making (& hopefully Centurion will too LOL!), I'm passing along the link so you could please consider making a donation -- whether it be $5 or $50 -- and below is some information about mitochondrial disease from the UMDF website, because knowledge is power!!

About Mitochondrial Disease
Mitochondrial diseases result from failures of the mitochondria, specialized compartments present in every cell of the body except red blood cells. Mitochondria are responsible for creating more than 90% of the energy needed by the body to sustain life and support growth. When they fail, less and less energy is generated within the cell. Cell injury and even cell death follow. If this process is repeated throughout the body, whole systems begin to fail, and the life of the person in whom this is happening is severely compromised. The disease primarily affects children, but adult onset is becoming more and more common.Diseases of the mitochondria appear to cause the most damage to cells of the brain, heart, liver, skeletal muscles, kidney and the endocrine and respiratory systems.Depending on which cells are affected, symptoms may include loss of motor control, muscle weakness and pain, gastro-intestinal disorders and swallowing difficulties, poor growth, cardiac disease, liver disease, diabetes, respiratory complications, seizures, visual/hearing problems, lactic acidosis, developmental delays and susceptibility to infection.

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