Hey wanna run around Edmonton half naked with me and then get trashed at the biggest after party Edmonton has to offer? Dead Serious.

Well we all know that cancer is bad and that I'm not a tree hugging join every movement type of hippie, so you can imagine how important this is. Around town there have been a lot of people that I know who have had a cancer below the waist. It?s not something people really have talked about in the past but the odds are that if you are my friend that at some point we have talked about genitals (probably mine). I don?t get embarrassed easily or have a hard time talking about anything but I can tell you first hand that when something is wrong my first instinct is not to tell people and have them worry. Here goes?

 I have polycystic ovarian disease, it?s not cancer so don?t freak out. It?s a genetic disease that can be passed down through either the Mother or the Father and does not have to effect all offspring (doesn?t mean the other offspring aren?t carriers). I don?t know what you learned in health class but all I did was STD crossword puzzles (not even kidding), I was told and it is good advice that ?if you don?t know what you?re doing you shouldn?t be doing it.?

 Basically you have an ovary an ovum a follicle and an egg, when you?re fertile multiple eggs mature (which are held in by a follicle) in the ovum and one of those eggs is released in the hopes of fertilization then the others stop maturing and go back to normal. That is normally happens but with polycystic ovarian disease those eggs don?t stop maturing and they turn into cysts and the egg that goes to be fertilized is also a cyst. So your periods become irregular and your follicles don?t break (again follicles hold your eggs) and when your follicles don?t break you don?t get any testosterone. In really rare cases shit gets really fucked up and you get a tumour on your pituitary gland and again in really rare cases it produces hormones like prolactin-which is what mine does. Now stay with me here most women?s prolactin levels is from 2-9 and it increases when you?re pregnant well mine was 149 and no I was not pregnant. Essentially it?s like being pregnant without actually being pregnant.

 So the side effects are just like pregnancy: you get bad skin, greasy hair, you vomit, get vertigo, get fat and when you?re pregnant you can?t get pregnant again. They don?t really know how long I?ve had this but I?ve been sick for about 3.5 years with the last year sending me to FSJ about 6 times,Vancouveronce andEdmonton5 times. After theVancouvertrip they figured out I had a tumour and nothing else at that point so I was forced to leave work, which if you know me I hate down time. So it took about 6 months for them to tell me that I didn?t have a cancerous brain tumour that wasn?t the size of a grapefruit and it wouldn?t crush my brain and kill me. Fun!!! In fact it?s super small but waiting for that really sucked all sorts of sweaty ass.

 Down the road my chances for heart attack/stroke go up 60% which it?s already 1 in 3 for women, type 2 diabetes goes up 60% (I got low sugar anyhow) and I jumped a great amount for pregnancy diabetes (which can be passed on to the spawn). So the longer you don?t ovulate the thicker the uterine lining becomes and can cause uterine cancer which gives you a 10% survival rate. The longer you have a brain tumour the chances it can grow and become cancerous. Finally I have like a 5 year window to ?maybe? produce an offspring and 10 years that are in the ?probably not? reproduce category. With the help of fertility drugs which increase the odds of multiple births (which already run on both sides of the family) which increases the mortality rate in both Mother and baby.

 What happens now? I take a couple pills everyday that smell like spearmint, I have to relax, have a blood test done every two months for the rest of my life and hopefully get cleared to go back to work after the next one. My skin is clearer, hair is softer and my ass is getting less fat (I mean the rest of me is getting less fat; I?ve always had the ghetto booty going on).

 In response to your last question no this is not a joke.

Underwear Affair® - a 10K run / 5K walk to uncover cures for cancers below the waist. It?s not only fun, but it fights prostate, colon, testicular, and ovarian cancer, among others. I?ll be just one of thousands of people gathered on the streets of Edmonton this summer in the biggest Affair this town has ever seen!

What can you do about it? You can donate to me or run with me! Don?t be shy - it?s about giving these devastating cancers some exposure and shedding some light on their cures. So please help me in my effort to raise money for care and research for cancers "down there!"