Category: Cancer

I just switched off this year’s St. Jude campaign. This year, the Relay FM community donated $701,220.26 to St. Jude. That puts us at $1.5 million raised in the last three years — which is an astonishing amount of money.

I owe a huge thank you to everyone who donated, as well as the Relay FM and St. Jude teams that help run the campaign every year. This is a team effort, and our team is simply the best.

St. Jude is in the business of treating and curing childhood cancer. In 2009, our oldest son was diagnosed with a brain tumor. His treatment at St. Jude saved his life, and the hospital didn’t charge our family a single cent for his care. That is thanks to donors around the world, and it’s a true honor to raise money each year for families who have had to follow in our footsteps.

If you’ve followed me for any amount of time, you already know that St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital holds an important place in my heart. My oldest son Josiah is the reason:

In a couple of months, he’ll be turning 13. Many parents of pre-teens will tell you that’s probably a miracle in and of itself, but Josiah is special. When he was just six months old, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

To be honest with you, his diagnosis feels like it was several lifetimes ago. It’s hard to keep track of how much he’s been through between surgeries and physical therapy and chemo and MRIs and feeding tubes and speech therapy and on and on and on. Cancer doesn’t give a rip about what you had planned; when dealing with a tumor, you’re on its turf most of the time.

Josiah made it through. He’s no longer a cancer patient; he’s a cancer survivor.

That’s thanks to the work being done at St. Jude.

When we first arrived, they already had all of his case files from our local children’s hospital. They had a plan to beat his brain tumor, and that’s what they did — without charging my family a single dime for any of it. In fact, in the 12 years we’ve been a St. Jude family, we haven’t paid anything for his care. They saved his life, and they did it without putting financial stress on what was at the time a very young family.

This work is possible thanks to donors from all around the world, and that’s why each September, I talk and write about St. Jude. I can’t help myself; when you’re given such an amazing gift, it must be shared.

This month, you’ll hear about St. Jude across the Relay FM family of podcasts, and from 12-8 PM on September 17, Myke Hurley and I will be co-hosting the third annual Podcastathon for St. Jude on Relay FM’s Twitch channel.

We’ve set our goal for this year’s campaign at $333,333.33, and are already at over $80,000 raised! If you can give anything, I’d love for you to donate to this amazing mission.

As always, thank you.

Last night, Relay FM’s campaign for St. Jude hit a major milestone: $500,000 raised in just two years.

Longtime readers will know I’ve raised money here on 512 Pixels for St. Jude every fall for years, but last year, we stepped it up a notch with our first Podcastathon, which proved to be the largest “podcast activation” for a non-profit fundraiser ever,¹ raising $315,000 for the kids of St. Jude.

The second annual Podcastathon is just a few days away, on September 18. We’ll be streaming on Twitch from 2-8 PM Eastern.

In the meantime — and in the madness of planning this year’s all-remote show — I wanted to take a second and thank everyone who has taken part in this so far this year. It’s incredibly humbling to see how the greater Apple Nerd Community gets behind this every year. It means so much to me, my family and everyone at Relay.

See you Friday!

September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

I know there are lots of great causes to care about in 2020, but St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is near and dear to my heart.

In May 2009, our oldest son was six months and diagnosed with a Glioma Astrocytoma brain tumor. Over the course of a weekend, we went from being new parents with nothing but optimism for our family, to new parents being told that our baby was facing impossible odds.

Through the work and dedication of his medical team at St. Jude, last week Josiah started 5th grade. His life has been difficult. He underwent chemotherapy as a baby. He has seizures. He has limited use of his left side and he struggles with his speech.

But he is here, and that is all I care about. The other challenges are all things we can work on.

For the last several years, the Apple community has rallied around this cause every fall, raising money for St. Jude, which treats its patients without charging their families a single dime.

That’s incredible, and it’s only possible because of donors like me and you.

Last year, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Josiah’s diagnosis. He’s no longer a cancer patient — he is a survivor. We wanted to mark the date in a permanent way, so my wife and I had a brick placed in his honor on campus at St. Jude.

I thought for a long time about what to have written on it, but I couldn’t have been happier when I saw it for the first time:

It reads:

In Honor of 10 Years at St. Jude, Finding Hope and Healing for Josiah and Friends.

It was important for us to include our community in this celebration, and that includes all of you.

Support the life-saving work of St. Jude

Video of Friday night’s Podcastathon for St. Jude is live now:

I also posted the audio on Relay FM, but video is the far better way to enjoy this if you missed it over the weekend.

Doing this show was the highlight of not only my year, but the last five years of running Relay FM. All of us at Relay are so humbled at the quarter of a million dollars you have helped us raise for the kids at St. Jude.

Danny Thomas believed that no child should die in the dawn of life, and St. Jude won’t stop until that vision is realized. We’ve done a small part to bring that future to life, and it’s amazing to get to do so while talking about new iPhones and throwing plastic balls at Myke Hurley.

We will be raising money through the end of the month, so if you haven’t donated yet, there is still time.

It has been exactly one month since we announced this campaign live on stage in San Francisco. If you had told me then that we’d be at over $250,000 I would not have believed you, but this nerdy community has blown me away.

Thank you. Even though I talk for a living, I’m speechless.

As I’m typing this, our annual fundraiser for St. Jude just cracked our initial $75,000 goal, a mere 12 days into the month of September. I cannot tell you how much this means to me, my family and the kids of St. Jude.

Being the parent of a cancer survivor is not what I would have signed up for ten years ago when our son was diagnosed with a brain tumor, but the things I have experienced because of it have genuinely made me a better person. I learn so much from my son and the other kids at St. Jude, and it’s an honor to serve them this way every year.

But we’re not stopping, because childhood cancer won’t stop, either.

So, how does $100,000 $175,000 sound?

PS: Myke and I will be playing Oregon Trail tomorrow on Twitch at 11:30 AM Eastern as part of the fundraiser. Be sure to stop by.

Our friends and family have run the annual St. Jude Marathon for a full decade as “Team GoJGo” in support of our son. This year, we’re marking ten years of hope and healing for not only our son, but so many other kids at St. Jude. Join us in support of this amazing hospital. With thanks from our friend Shannon and the folks at Cotton Bureau, we have brand new artwork for the team, with t-shirts, hoodies and a tank-top for sale to the public, not just our runners:

All profits are being donated directly to St. Jude, which never bills the families of patients for the care they receive.

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and once again this year, I am raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which treats patients without charging their families a dime.

Treatments invented by St. Jude have helped push the overall cancer survival rate from 20% to more than 80%. My 10-year-old son is a survivor of brain cancer, thanks to the hard work of the men and women at St. Jude. Josiah is in 4th grade this year, and leads a joyous life. He loves music, playing with babies and spending time on our big tree swing. He is a true blessing to everyone who gets to meet him, and cancer cannot keep him down.

This year, I am excited to announce that Relay FM is an official fundraising partner of St. Jude. As such, we have a super swanky fundraising page that I would love for you to go check out.

Last year, thanks to your generosity, we raised a little over $69,000 for the kids of St. Jude. This year, we’re hoping to blast through our $75,000 goal. To help make that possible, Myke Hurley and I will be co-hosting a live 6-hour video podcast on Friday, September 20, from 4-10 PM Eastern. Be on the look out for more information on that in the coming weeks.

Throughout the month of September, you will hear more about the work of St. Jude across a bunch of Relay FM podcasts¹ and other nerdy publications. Each September, I am blown away by the compassion found in our community, so please know that my family — and countless others at St. Jude — cannot express our thanks enough.

No child should die in the dawn of life, at St. Jude is inching towards that reality each and every day, thanks to people like me and you.