Okay, people. You want something to do? I'll give it to you.

A couple of months ago, just before Christmas, I asked the readers of HN if they'd mind if I gave their hard-earned, donated dollars to a cause that wasn't directly connected to oral cancer.

You guys gave me the go-ahead, so I sent a thousand bucks to my pal Tashi. She's a fellow Blogspot blogger; somebody I met through a mutual friend (Lara) and through Jezebel, where we both post.

Tashi has a husband, called Wash on her blog. Wash was diagnosed a few months after they married with glioblastoma multiforme, stage four. For those of you who are not in the neuro-know, glioblastoma multiforme at that stage carries a one-hundred-percent mortality rate. The primary population diagnosed with it is men in their fifties.

Wash was 24 or 25 (I can't remember which and can't be bothered to check) at diagnosis.

One in forty-three million people will be diagnosed with a glio at that age.

I thought *I* had it bad: one in five hundred thousand people will be diagnosed with my particular type of oral cancer this year. I have oodles of company when compared to Wash.

Wash has survived past expectations: he's lived fourteen months with either a tumor or the threat of the tumor coming back, which is *huge*. Unfortunately, that survival has come with costs: Both he and Tashi have had to drop out of school. Tashi had to quit her job once it became clear that Wash couldn't be left home alone due to loss of memory and inhibition.

They survive now on state aid, which, being as they live in Arizona, isn't much. Plus, Tashi has to reapply every so often to the various programs in order for them to keep covering rent.

You guys made it possible, with the money you donated, for them to cover rent for a month, and gas money, and a couple of prescriptions, and a warm hat for Wash to wear during the winter months. I am asking you to put yourself and your hard-earned cash out there again, because Tashi is asking for it.

Here's the deal: Wash has a limited amount of time left. Bluntly, he'll be lucky to see June. He knows this, and he's opted out of further treatment. More chemo and radiation would only make him miserable, and wouldn't extend his life appreciably. Tashi, tasked as she is with both taking care of Wash and making ends meet, is at the end of her rope.

She needs money. Plain and simple: she needs cash to buy drugs, or pay for gas, or pay the heating bill. She's asking people to adopt a bill for her here. Please help.

I ask this of you guys on her behalf not because I feel for her, though I do. I ask because she's a funny, smart, insightful person whom I've come to like very much over the last few months. I ask because when I got my diagnosis, the first person besides my sister to offer support was Tashi--even with all she had going on, she still sent me emails that helped buoy my spirits. I ask because she's snarky and intelligent and is living on the bare bones that any person could live on and still take good care of somebody that they love. She is giving Wash the best life possible, given the circumstances. She's doing something I don't think I could manage, even with an extra fifteen years and all this nursing experience.

Tashi's and Wash's story is here.

Be warned: even knowing what I know of her, and of Wash, I was still in tears by the middle of the second page.

Tashi is *so* gonna kick my ass when she sees this. Please, please make it worth my sore-assed while.

Thank you.