Teri je dao milion funti za istrazivanje Alchajmerove bolesti, fanovi worldwide pokushavaju da nadmashe donaciju, njemu u chast. Evo njegovog govora i linkova:
http://groups.myspace.com/DonateForPratchett
DONATE A POUND TODAY!
So the great Terry Pratchett has donated a million pounds to Alzheimer’s research. There are now a number of fans online trying to get enough people to donate their money so that we can match Terry’s donation.
We are asking for just a pound from each fan, however as your group leader I have decided to set a president and I personally have donated £10 and shall be donating more when I can.
So £1 or how ever much you can give, it’s such a little thing, but if we can get a million fans to do it then it won’t seem so little anymore.
Just visit the Alzheimer’s website where you can donate a £1 (or more) in a one off donation, or you can set up a direct debit.
http://www.alzheimers-research.org.uk/howtohelp/
If your not already convinced then here’s Terry’s speech, make sure you’ve got the tissues to hand!
’Ladies and Gentlemen. My name is Terry Pratchett, author of a
series of inexplicably successful fantasy books and I have had
Alzheimer’s now for the past two years plus, in which time I
managed to write a couple of bestsellers. I have a rare variant. I
don’t understand very much about it, but apparently if you are
going to have Alzheimer’s it’s a good one to have. So, a stroke of
luck there then...
Interestingly enough, when I was diagnosed last December by
those nice people at Addenbrooke’s, I started a very different
journey through Dementia. This one had much better scenery,
interesting and often very attractive inhabitants, wonderful wildlife
and many opportunities for excitement and adventure.
Those of you who’s last experience with computer games was
looking at Lara Croft’s buttocks might not be aware of how good
they have become as audio and visual experiences, although I
would concede that Lara’s buttocks were a visual experience in
their own right. But in this case I was travelling through a country
that was part of the huge computer game called Oblivion, which is
so beautifully detailed that I have often ridden around it to enjoy
the scenery and weather and have hardly bothered to kill anything
at all.
At the same time as I began exploring the wonderful Kingdom of
Dementia, which is next door to the Kingdom of Mania, I was also
experiencing the slightly more realistic experience of being a 59
year old who finds they have early onset Alzheimer’s. Apparently I
reacted to this situation in a reasonably typical way, with a sense
of loss and abandonment with an incoherent, or perhaps I should
say, violently coherent fury that made the Miltonic Lucifer’s rage
against Heaven seem a bit miffed by comparison. That fire still
burns.
I want to go on writing! Admittedly, that means I have to stay alive.
You can’t write books when you are dead, unless your name is L.
Ron Hubbard. And so now I’m a game for real.
It’s a nasty disease, surrounded by shadows and small, largely
unseen tragedies. People don’t know what to say, unless they
have had it in the family
People ask me why I announced that I had Alzheimer’s. My
response was: why shouldn’t I? I remember when people died "of
a long illness" now we call cancer by its name, and as every
wizard knows, once you have a thing’s real name you have the first
step to its taming. We are at war with cancer, and we use that
vocabulary. We battle, we are brave, we survive. And we have a
large armaments industry.
For those of us with early onset in particular, it’s more of a series of
skirmishes. My GP is helpful and patient, but I don’t have a
specialist locally. The NHS kindly allows me to buy my own Aricept
because I’m too young to have Alzheimer’s for free, a situation I’m
okay with in a want-to-kick-a-politician-in-the-teeth-kind of way
But, on the whole, you try to be your own doctor. The internet
twangs night and day. I walk a lot and take more supplements
than the Sunday papers. We talk to one another and compare
regimes. Part of me lives in a world of new age remedies and
science, and some of the science is a little like voodoo. But
science was never an exact science, and personally I’d eat the
arse out of a dead mole if it offered a fighting chance.
Fortunately, I have the Greek Chorus to calm me down
Soon after I told the world my website fell over and my PA had to
spend the evening negotiating more bandwidth. I had more than
60,000 messages within the first few hours. Most of them were
readers and well-wishers. Some of them wanted to sell me snake
oil and I’m not necessarily going to dismiss all of these, as I have
never found a rusty snake. But a large handful came from
’experienced’ sufferers, successfully fighting a holding action, and
various people in universities and research establishments who had,
despite all expectations, risen to high places in their various
professions even while being confirmed readers of my books. And
they said; can we help? They are the Greek Chorus. Only two of
them are known to each other and they give me their advice on
various options that I suggest. They include a Wiccan, too. It’s a
good idea to cover all the angles.
It was interesting when I asked about having my dental amalgam
fillings removed. There was a chorus of "Hrumph, no scientific
evidence, hrumph...., but if you can afford to have it done properly
then it certainly won’t do any harm and you never know."
And that is where I am, along with many others, scrabbling to stay
ahead long enough to be there when the Cure, which I suspect
may be more like a regime, comes along. Say it will be soon –
There’s nearly as many of us as there are cancer sufferers, and it
looks as if the number of people with the disease will double within
a generation. And in most cases you will find alongside the
sufferer you will find a spouse, suffering as much.
It’s a shock and a shame, then, to find out that funding for research
is three per cent of that which goes to find cancer cures. Perhaps
that is why, for example, that I know three people who have
successfully survived brain tumours but no-one who has beaten
Alzheimer’s...although among the Greek Chorus are some who
are giving it a hard time.
I’d like a chance to die like my father did—of Cancer, at 86.
(Remember, I’m speaking as a man with Alzheimer’s, which strips
away your living self a bit at a time). Before he went to spend his
last two weeks in a hospice he was bustling around the house,
fixing things. He talked to us right up to the last few days, knowing
who we were and who he was. Right now, I envy him. And there
are thousands like me, except that they don’t get heard.
So let’s shout something loud enough to hear. We need you and
you need money. I’m giving you a million dollars. Spend it wisely.’
http://www.alzheimers-research.org.uk/howtohelp/