A couple weeks ago, I got a chance to catch up with an old friend of mine. We got on the topic of healthcare—a few years back, he’d dealt with the sudden, earth-shattering appearance of testicular cancer in his life. I’m happy to say that he’s healthy today, but, as he pointed out, that’s thanks largely to the relatively generous healthcare coverage he enjoyed at the time due to his corporate employment. We talked about that for a little while and reflected on how mind-boggling it is to us that some of our mutual friends feel it unpatriotic or unfair or what have you to work to offer that kind of life-saving healthcare to the general population, corporate job or no corporate job.
How can it be unpatriotic to try your very best to take care of your citizens? Longest-possible-term thinking, doesn’t that make for the healthiest, most functional society possible? Imagine if we were able to prioritize the health of Americans over all else and every single citizen of these United States no longer had to worry about any of that. Imagine everything we could get done, putting that energy elsewhere.
As we all know, though, that’s not at all the case. For many of us, sadly, we experience that reality first-hand.
Like our friend, Pam.
We met Pam years back in Brooklyn. She ran an Atlantic Street boutique called the Banquet with another friend of ours, Miranda Bennett, both of whom we did some branding work for back in the day. Last year, Pam moved out to California to be closer to her family and move her jewelry line, PLUME, to its next stages of development.
But shortly after arriving on the west coast, Pam was diagnosed with B-cell Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and Leukemia. A little while ago, Pam found a bone marrow match + donor. That fact, and the fact that she has a broad, dedicated support network make Pam luckier than most. But she’s since been hospital-bound for six months and her healthcare is only partially footing the massive, massive bill.
Cue dedicated support network—our mutual friend, Allison Tray, owner of Boerum Hill’s Tres Belle Petite Medi-Spa, is hosting The Pam Give-a-Damn, an evening of light fare, wine, and awesome gift bags worth $500 each, all to benefit Pam. As Allison puts it:
“100% of monies raised will go directly to Pam. Busy that night? Not feeling social? Out of town guests?That’s fine, buy a ticket to help Pam and we’ll drink your wine.”
The event takes place Wednesday, July 23 from 6 – 9 PM at Tres Belle—105 Bond Street Brooklyn, NY. But, like Allison wrote, you don’t need to be present to win the raffle bags—winners will be announced by email on July 22 and each ticket you buy automatically enters you to win one of twelve bags.
Visit the event site Allison set up to see details and see the impressive list of raffle bag donors. But, clearly, we’re doing this for bigger reasons than gift bags, those are just a nice side effect of giving a damn.
Whether you know Pam or not, trust us, she’s good people and she’s in need. If you can’t afford a ticket ($45), please give what you can. And thank you so much.
