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Please play "Sometimes" and/or "ATY" at Adelaide II or Perth !!
SneedyBaumbach
Posts: 58
I've been following up as much as possible on the European tour, now in Oz before the band moves on to the final couple of shows in Hawaii (where my Navy buddy has recently been stationed, working for the Marines). The Newcastle setlist was straight out of left field, and it's generated a wealth of uber-pleased and envious fans.
Since time is running out, and the year is come close to ending, I'm really hoping the band will please throw "Sometimes" into one of the next few sets, particularly the second night in Adelaide or in Perth.
I resolved a pledge a few weeks back that if the band played the song before the year ended, I'd make a more conscious effort to take better stock of my health, particularly my knees, which aren't in great shape after osteonucrosis (death of blood vessels around the joints of my knees following rigorous chemo- and radio-therapy from 1998-1999 to prepare me for a BMT transplant and control WBC counts after the procedure. The BMT was a success; I lived, but have been suffering from physical detriments caused by GVHd (rejection of marrow tissue) and sepsis resulting from poor supervision of my health care at a time when my body couldn't defend itself.
It's been many years since I've fought, not knowing at the time what I was fighting for and even today wondering why I struggled to overcome when as a teenager and a loner who didn't appreciate living until it literally became a matter of fight or flight. I wouldn't have overcome it if it weren't for oncologists who actually cared about sustaining me, and if I didn't have something to keep myself busy. I have always been a big fan of music and films and without them to keep my mind off my situation, I could have just as easily done little more than panic.
'Yield' came out ten days before I was diagnosed with the CML. I remember knowing the album was coming out, but didn't get a copy of it until my 16th birthday two months later. I remember getting it with Knapsack's 'Day Three of My New Life', Clash's 'London Calling', Radiohead's 'Airbag/How Am I Driving?' EP and that re-issue of R.E.M.'s 'Life's Rich Pageant' with the bonus tracks. The older stuff second-hand (it was all my family could afford to put up at the time), the newer stuff was easy to find at most mega-chain stores. Those albums became the soundtrack of my summer. The summer I sat in a hospital bed and watched shitty sitcoms on the hospital's TV, counted off days like a sentence, got hooked on chicken broth and baby food and cried every time I took a shower because my hair fell out and because I was homesick. I've never had long hair since, and in hindsight, I don't miss it all that much. And thinking back on that summer and that fall in '98, I remember fond things. The introduction of life in isolation, the great looking nurses and nurse-students who were only a half-dozen years older than me, and getting messages from the outside world. I remember Monica-gate. I remember Farley and Hartman dying six months apart. I mourned Hartman.
It's hard to explain what one brings away from an event like this. In 1999 I left my small hometown to visit Dayton where I met my donor. He's such an incredible guy. Without his marrow, I may not have pulled through. I can't think of how to repay a deby like that. The man saved my life. He's even saved the life of another girl in NYC... the man's marrow saves lives, plural. It saved me, and the sad part is because I've become this shell of man who hardly ever leaves my home, I can't deal with people. I can't even write this guy to thank him. I want to thank him, but more than anything I just wish I could talk to the guy. Correspond, whatever... it's difficult to take that step and I can't explain why. I've lost a lot of friends I've met in person or on the internet because I've holed up inside my home, inside myself. Writing a letter isn't the easiest thing to do when you don't know how to express your gratitudes.
At times I don't know if I've earned my right to take up space on this earth. I enjoy my time here, but I'm tormented by the most mundane, everday things and eight years after my marrow transplant I'm still using medication to manage pain and doesn't exactly help me with trust issues. I want to be a samaritan, but I don't trust; I'm weary of all strangers, even though a stranger got me to live.
I think it's great that McCready and PJ are speaking out on Crohn's Disease and Colitis. My cousin is afflicted, and I've seen firsthand how unpleasant the disease is. I suffer from pancreatitis, just another side effect of the Graph vs. Host disease, and the only way I could describe it is like feeling impaled by an invisible spike. Breathing, eating, laughing, shitting, it's all painful during a bout. But it's something I'll always carry, as long as I walk this Earth.
That's all I really have to say. If I were in the band's position I'd raise money and try and make the public more aware of these diseases; the National Donor Registry found 184 matches and selected the best one, and all I owe to my fortune there is the fact that I was born a white male in America. There are not enough categorical minorities contributing marrow to the registry, so the chance of a person of a different race or nationality contracting leukemia of any sort will have a slim to nil chance of finding a 'perfect' marrow donor. They may end up with a couple hits, close matches, but the risk is much greater.
You can donate marrow through most blood-donation clinics, and during drives. All you have to do is tell the lab-tech drawing your blood you'd like to offer your bone marrow to be entered into the National Marrow Registry. They are hq'd in St. Paul, Minnesota, here is the website:
http://www.marrow.org/
Give it a thought. I don't represent the NMDP, I am just someone who has hypermortally benefitted by the database and its donors, and after battling leukemia and knew and am highly aware of others that didn't survive simply due to their exotic ethnic makeup and/or the lack of those willing to donate marrow because they don't have the time or are afraid of needles. If I could campaign to get more people to donate for type marrow samples for the NMD Program, I would. For now, I'm just a content consumer; content in that I am alive because the program works, it saves lives.
I know this is a long post. I'm again asking if the band will please play "Sometimes" before 2006 is officially over. I appreciate the attempt in San Francisco, but would love to hear the rest of the song, especially on the second night at Adelaide or at Perth.
And don't forget if you want to please Aussie fans or fans worldwide flying to Hawaii for the final two shows, opening a set or an encore with "All Those Yesterdays" will have the fans in a state of aural ecstasy. For every finger on every one of my hands I know there are Ten people on these boards who'd be blown away hearing it, and maybe ten for each of them. It's a universal; an exponential token of adoration, like kittens or grandmothers.
So I've been asking the band to please play "Sometimes" before the year ends for a few months now; I don't know how to get my message across, or who to contact who has an interface with the band in compiling setlists. When I attend concerts I can't stand up for more than 20 minutes before my legs give out, I need to sit or lean on rails, so I wouldn't be able to stand around near the front, center stage, jumping up with a "SOMETIMES!" sign, and it's the holidays so I can't pay any of my Aussie friends to do it for me. I certainly feel almost 35 sets into their Europe/Australia '06 tour, "Sometimes" is due again. Do me a solid Pearl Jam, and I'll do whatever you want. Just name it.
I'm going to finally leave it at that. I've said just about all i can say after harping on and on about this, and hope if anything someone reads this and decides to contribute marrow. It's an easy way to help save lives. if anyone has anything to share, please feel free. We'll see together what happens at these last five shows this year.
Keep me posted, please.
- Sneedy
Since time is running out, and the year is come close to ending, I'm really hoping the band will please throw "Sometimes" into one of the next few sets, particularly the second night in Adelaide or in Perth.
I resolved a pledge a few weeks back that if the band played the song before the year ended, I'd make a more conscious effort to take better stock of my health, particularly my knees, which aren't in great shape after osteonucrosis (death of blood vessels around the joints of my knees following rigorous chemo- and radio-therapy from 1998-1999 to prepare me for a BMT transplant and control WBC counts after the procedure. The BMT was a success; I lived, but have been suffering from physical detriments caused by GVHd (rejection of marrow tissue) and sepsis resulting from poor supervision of my health care at a time when my body couldn't defend itself.
It's been many years since I've fought, not knowing at the time what I was fighting for and even today wondering why I struggled to overcome when as a teenager and a loner who didn't appreciate living until it literally became a matter of fight or flight. I wouldn't have overcome it if it weren't for oncologists who actually cared about sustaining me, and if I didn't have something to keep myself busy. I have always been a big fan of music and films and without them to keep my mind off my situation, I could have just as easily done little more than panic.
'Yield' came out ten days before I was diagnosed with the CML. I remember knowing the album was coming out, but didn't get a copy of it until my 16th birthday two months later. I remember getting it with Knapsack's 'Day Three of My New Life', Clash's 'London Calling', Radiohead's 'Airbag/How Am I Driving?' EP and that re-issue of R.E.M.'s 'Life's Rich Pageant' with the bonus tracks. The older stuff second-hand (it was all my family could afford to put up at the time), the newer stuff was easy to find at most mega-chain stores. Those albums became the soundtrack of my summer. The summer I sat in a hospital bed and watched shitty sitcoms on the hospital's TV, counted off days like a sentence, got hooked on chicken broth and baby food and cried every time I took a shower because my hair fell out and because I was homesick. I've never had long hair since, and in hindsight, I don't miss it all that much. And thinking back on that summer and that fall in '98, I remember fond things. The introduction of life in isolation, the great looking nurses and nurse-students who were only a half-dozen years older than me, and getting messages from the outside world. I remember Monica-gate. I remember Farley and Hartman dying six months apart. I mourned Hartman.
It's hard to explain what one brings away from an event like this. In 1999 I left my small hometown to visit Dayton where I met my donor. He's such an incredible guy. Without his marrow, I may not have pulled through. I can't think of how to repay a deby like that. The man saved my life. He's even saved the life of another girl in NYC... the man's marrow saves lives, plural. It saved me, and the sad part is because I've become this shell of man who hardly ever leaves my home, I can't deal with people. I can't even write this guy to thank him. I want to thank him, but more than anything I just wish I could talk to the guy. Correspond, whatever... it's difficult to take that step and I can't explain why. I've lost a lot of friends I've met in person or on the internet because I've holed up inside my home, inside myself. Writing a letter isn't the easiest thing to do when you don't know how to express your gratitudes.
At times I don't know if I've earned my right to take up space on this earth. I enjoy my time here, but I'm tormented by the most mundane, everday things and eight years after my marrow transplant I'm still using medication to manage pain and doesn't exactly help me with trust issues. I want to be a samaritan, but I don't trust; I'm weary of all strangers, even though a stranger got me to live.
I think it's great that McCready and PJ are speaking out on Crohn's Disease and Colitis. My cousin is afflicted, and I've seen firsthand how unpleasant the disease is. I suffer from pancreatitis, just another side effect of the Graph vs. Host disease, and the only way I could describe it is like feeling impaled by an invisible spike. Breathing, eating, laughing, shitting, it's all painful during a bout. But it's something I'll always carry, as long as I walk this Earth.
That's all I really have to say. If I were in the band's position I'd raise money and try and make the public more aware of these diseases; the National Donor Registry found 184 matches and selected the best one, and all I owe to my fortune there is the fact that I was born a white male in America. There are not enough categorical minorities contributing marrow to the registry, so the chance of a person of a different race or nationality contracting leukemia of any sort will have a slim to nil chance of finding a 'perfect' marrow donor. They may end up with a couple hits, close matches, but the risk is much greater.
You can donate marrow through most blood-donation clinics, and during drives. All you have to do is tell the lab-tech drawing your blood you'd like to offer your bone marrow to be entered into the National Marrow Registry. They are hq'd in St. Paul, Minnesota, here is the website:
http://www.marrow.org/
Give it a thought. I don't represent the NMDP, I am just someone who has hypermortally benefitted by the database and its donors, and after battling leukemia and knew and am highly aware of others that didn't survive simply due to their exotic ethnic makeup and/or the lack of those willing to donate marrow because they don't have the time or are afraid of needles. If I could campaign to get more people to donate for type marrow samples for the NMD Program, I would. For now, I'm just a content consumer; content in that I am alive because the program works, it saves lives.
I know this is a long post. I'm again asking if the band will please play "Sometimes" before 2006 is officially over. I appreciate the attempt in San Francisco, but would love to hear the rest of the song, especially on the second night at Adelaide or at Perth.
And don't forget if you want to please Aussie fans or fans worldwide flying to Hawaii for the final two shows, opening a set or an encore with "All Those Yesterdays" will have the fans in a state of aural ecstasy. For every finger on every one of my hands I know there are Ten people on these boards who'd be blown away hearing it, and maybe ten for each of them. It's a universal; an exponential token of adoration, like kittens or grandmothers.
So I've been asking the band to please play "Sometimes" before the year ends for a few months now; I don't know how to get my message across, or who to contact who has an interface with the band in compiling setlists. When I attend concerts I can't stand up for more than 20 minutes before my legs give out, I need to sit or lean on rails, so I wouldn't be able to stand around near the front, center stage, jumping up with a "SOMETIMES!" sign, and it's the holidays so I can't pay any of my Aussie friends to do it for me. I certainly feel almost 35 sets into their Europe/Australia '06 tour, "Sometimes" is due again. Do me a solid Pearl Jam, and I'll do whatever you want. Just name it.
I'm going to finally leave it at that. I've said just about all i can say after harping on and on about this, and hope if anything someone reads this and decides to contribute marrow. It's an easy way to help save lives. if anyone has anything to share, please feel free. We'll see together what happens at these last five shows this year.
Keep me posted, please.
- Sneedy
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