Timing is Everything

I started December focused on timing. At 12:00 AM EST on December 1st I submitted an application for a $50,000 Pepsi Refresh grant for Waiting-Place. It had to be done on the first day of the month, and it had to be one of the first 1,000 which were received in just eight minutes. As Alanis Morisette sings in my head, I tell you that now we can only wait (Isn't it ironic, don't you think?). We will find out on January 1st if it was accepted and up for voting. Keep an eye on Facebook & the blog! We will be begging you, BEGGING you, to vote a lot and frequently to get us into the top ten to win. It will get us such an awesome start, but it is a total long shot. We are just forming. Really, I feel like I threw a Hail Mary pass on our very first play.


This time of year I think about my mom. A lot. This project has not distracted from that one bit. I will tell you that my mom made awesome fudge at Christmas and her idea of breakfast was Diet Pepsi and a Snickers. When I submitted that application, I was wrapped up in her robe and as it processed, a Diet Pepsi can spun around on my computer screen! I truly hope Waiting-Place can do as much for people like my mom as it will for those like Mr. 1inamillion.


It's proving easier for people to understand the concept of sponsoring time in chemotherapy for a cancer patient. That takes hours, if not days, in a treatment facility. It's harder to grasp the value in an appointment for a patient with something else such as Parkinson's disease. She might just see the neurologist for a few minutes. True. An athlete completes a 5K in about the same time. Much like running a race, there's a lot of effort that comes before and probably a bit of pain after.

My mom taught me that timing is everything. It's the secret to making the family fudge and was crucial with her Parkinson's. She would struggle to control her limbs, take her pills and still struggle while she waited for the medication to kick in. Once it did, she could function for a while until it approached time to take her medicine again. It always wore off before then, offering more times throughout the day were she battled to stay still, to keep her balance, and later, to move. Anywhere she needed to go and anything she needed to do had to be done in that sweet spot, when medication was working but not in danger of wearing off. It took some practice to learn to maneuver with that body, to determine how long she could last, to time her day, to determine what took too much effort and what was worth the difficulty. Making a doctor's appointment that might not be according to her own schedule? It meant shifting what she had down to a precision. Maybe stretching it a bit further beforehand or pushing herself a little harder.

Moving from house to car, car to office building, lobby to third floor. Receptionist to lab, lab to exam room, nurse to resident, resident to doctor. Exam room back to receptionist to elevator to lobby to car to pharmacy and back home. By the end, limbs are certainly shaking, feet cramping. A little like an athlete after a hard race. Exhausted and spent, but no sense of accomplishment. No t-shirt for the effort.

When you've seen it first hand, it's easy to recognize value in that time and see efforts worth sponsoring to benefit the cause. My focus hasn't been on Christmas cookies or family fudge yet, but on research foundations, non profit status and grant applications. Even still, my mom has been very much on my mind.