I’m asking you personally to come to this show because every single penny will go straight to the BC Cancer Foundation and you can’t believe how important that is to me.
My only brother was diagnosed with a brain tumor the size of an orange when he was only eight years old – I was just five. My whole family spent years in and out of different hospitals, while we watched him strain from the treatments that were killing his body but saving his life. It was hard to see him suffer.
After missing out on much of his socially developmental youth being bedridden, he returned to school where he was bullied for being frail and bald. Kids can be so cruel. Little does he know that to this day, he’s the strongest person I’ve ever met. There are even medical textbooks written on him.
He wasn’t supposed to graduate from high school. But he did. He got better marks than I ever did and even got his university degree as an Automated Systems Technician.
Even with daily injections of growth hormones throughout his entire teenaged life, he was not supposed to grow properly. But he did. You’d never know his past by looking at him.
But cancer is all consuming, and the risk is ever present. A few years ago, they found another tumor in his brain. But he was luckier this time; it wasn’t cancerous. Any more chemotherapy and his body will die.
He has only 25% of his hearing left now, completely deaf in one ear with only tinnitus, a high pitched (and highly annoying) ringing left in it. He cannot be around loud noises and there is a chance that he could end up completely unable to hear one day. And here’s me, a musician, barely able to share my music with my brother.
But I am thankful in some ways, because it was during these hard times that I found music, which offered me some comfort and made me who I am today. Other members of my immediate family were not as fortunate. Some turned to hard drugs, avoiding reality while others simply broke down. As a direct result, my family broke apart and had to go their separate ways.
As for my brother, he is a miracle child but he’ll never be the same.
So let’s have an incredible night in the face of something so evil. And instead of being filled with sadness we will be filled with amazing company, an incredible night, and the hope that someday this will never have to happen to anybody ever again.
See you at the show.
Yours,
Sheldon Stenning
Sharks! On Fire!
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BC Cancer Benefit Show, presented by Goodnight Grace.
Date: June 02, 2012
Time: 7:00pm – 11:00pm (Doors Open @ 6:30pm)
Location: The Venue (The Vineyard), 5708 Glover Road, Langley
Facebook it here: http://www.facebook.com/events/353540728034166/
