As a goodly percentage of you probably know, author Jay Lake has cancer. He’s had cancer for years now, going through round after round of chemo and surgery in an attempt to halt it; they’ve managed to slow it, but he’s pretty close to terminal decline at this point.

However.

Read this post. It’s about Jay participating in a cutting-edge NIH trial that holds great promise for improving our methods of cancer treatment in the future. It will likely extend his own life at least a bit; it will certainly extend a great many other people’s lives, and possibly even save some of them, as doctors put together superior tools for the task.

As Jay points out, the reason they’re able to take such a good shot at it with him is because of a fundraiser his friends ran before, which pulled together enough money for Whole Genome Sequencing. That data means the doctors in this trial are incredibly well-armed. But the mass of data also means it will take longer to sort through, which means Jay will be in Maryland longer than expected. Since Maryland is not where he lives, this is expensive.

There’s another fundraiser. It has already met its goal, but the goal was to cover the length of time Jay expected to be in Maryland. Which means it is no longer enough. There will be some stretch goals added soon, but you don’t need to know what those will be to donate, do you? You already know the ultimate cause is a good one. You aren’t funding the NIH, but you are funding Jay’s ability to participate in the trial, which will help both him and them. So if you can spare anything, please head on over and do so.