FLHW

Poker for Prostates

charity poker, FLHW, PCF, Poker for Prostates -
On Monday night we held our 9th Poker for Prostates event!
It never fails, at every event there is someone that I am blessed to know, who steps forward and amazes me with their generosity! Thanks to him, I am forever grateful!  Once again, I am humbled by the support of all the participants and volunteers who made the evening a success.

The event resulted in 33 players who helped us to raise nearly $2,000!!

This moves us closer to our 2010 goal of donating $40k to PCF, which repesents an increase of 25% from 2009!!

 The action begins!                                  The final table!

 Steve, Mark and David                         Bruce 2nd Place, Brad 1st, Rob 3rd

Six is magical

ball golf, charity, David Emerson, FLHW -

Tomorrow at this time I will be knee deep in getting the 6th Annual FLHW Golf Tournament off the ground. God has once again promised us a perfect day of 75 degrees and no rain! We’re six for six when it comes to the weather.

This year we find ourselves in an interesting spot; the number of players and teams is down slightly, we’ll have 31 total, but the number of sponsors and donations are up quite a bit. At times like this I’m so overwhelmed with others generosity, and I’m not sure what to say that will adequately express my appreciation. So I try to just smile and thank them once, maybe even twice, but it never seems to be enough.

In a few hours I’m off to the airport to pick up one of my life long friends. We go back more than forty-two years. He sacrifices a weekend from his wife and daughters each year, flies across the country and spends it with us. In addition a number of family and friends will come to Kansas City from St. Louis to spend a few days here as well. I’m not sure I can find words to appropriately thank them for their support and participation as well. I am truly blessed to be surrounded by friends, family and even strangers, all helping me do our little part to rid the world of this awful disease.

I’ve said before that since I was diagnosed, I didn’t ‘get’ cancer, God ‘gave’ it to me and it is up to me to figure out why and what to do with it. These examples are just a few of the many I have experienced in the past five and a half years that lead me to believe I’m getting closer to figuring it out.

Great Prostate Cancer Challange – Kansas City

David Emerson, David Emerson pca, FLHW, Great Prostate Cancer Challenge, KCUC, PSA -

For those of you in KC, here’s a great walk/5k that you should put on your calendars.
Mary and I participated last year and really enjoyed it.

I hope to see you there this year!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Date / Time
Sunday, September 19, 2010 @ 8:00 AM
5K Race and 1 Mile Fun Walk – 8:00 a.m.
On site Registration – 7:30 a.m.

Address
10701 Nall Ave, Overland Park, KS
Northeast corner of I-435 and Nall in Overland Park, Kansas

Registration Closing Date
Pre-registration via website through Wednesday, September 16, 2010.
On-site registration Sunday, September 19, 2010 beginning at 7:30 a.m.

  • $20 Pre-race registration
  • $25 Race-day registration
  • $10 Fun Walk

Entry fees are non-refundable

Brief Description
Join us on September 19, 2010 for the 2nd Annual Great Prostate Cancer Challenge® in Kansas City to benefit ZERO — The Project to End Prostate Cancer. In the inaugural race last year Kansas City Urology Care donated $10,000 to ZERO and $5,000 to the Kansas City Prostate Cancer Foundation.

We are passionate about prostate cancer! We are dedicated to helping fund research and educating the
Kansas City Metropolitan area about prostate cancer. Help us make this passion come true. Sign up today
to run or walk.

Information and Sign-up

Quite memorable

Advanced Prostate Cancer, Charity Disc Golf, David Emerson, FLHW, PCa -

I heard this on television last night; “The things you do for yourself die with you. The things you do for others lives on forever”

I did paraphrase this, and although I searched for the original source, I could not locate it. However, it remains my unwritten mantra. Even before I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, I was the type of person to jump in and help others without anticipation of reciprocal favors. This idea lives on in Faith, Love, Hope, Win. The foundation is not about helping David, it is and will remain about helping others battling this disease by supporting the research for better treatments and perhaps one day a cure for advanced prostate cancer.

Isn’t it sad that so many people in our society live with a mindset completely opposite, the old, “What’s in it for me?” approach to life. The gift of life is too short to live that way. I continue to believe I was put here for a reason and given prostate cancer in order to help others. “It’s not all about Me”, as I have said many times in the history of this blog.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am looking forward to Friday and Saturday’s FLHW events. I know they will go well, but I always get nervous leading up to our events. Once again the weather is forecasted to cooperate. Saturday will be a chilly 42 when we get started in the morning, but perfectly sunny with temperatures climbing into the mid-sixties!

I walked the disc golf course yesterday with the owner and his wife. They are truly good, generous people. Even though I have played the course a dozen times I couldn’t help express my gratitude to them for the use of this piece of property. To repeat an earlier description; where the subdivisions end on the south end of Overland Park is where this property and the ‘country’ begins.

With that thought, I close by repeating the quote I started with because it applies to these people as well as to myself: “The things you do for yourself die with you. The things you do for others lives on forever”.

A hectic week ahead for FLHW

Advanced Prostate Cancer, Charity Disc Golf, disc golf, FLHW, PCa -

On Friday, May 7th, FLHW will be hosting our 2nd annual ‘FLHW Friday Night at the Greenhouse’ event. The owner of Suburban Lawns and Garden will be donating 10% of all sales between 5pm and 8pm, at the 105th and Roe store to FLHW. He also provides live music, beverages and light snacks. It is a very nice event and will be a fun night! It’s also the Friday before Mother’s Day, so a great time to pick up some flowers!

Details? http://www.flhw.org/images/stories/pdf/2010%20greenhouse%20event.jpg

The following day is the 3rd annual ‘FLHW PC Doubles Shootout’. It will be played again at the beautiful Thornfield disc golf course, a privately held course in Stilwell, KS. This disc golf tournament will attract approximately ninety disc golfers for two eighteen hole rounds, lunch, a few beverages and prizes for the winning teams. As with the ball golf tournament, the day will run smoothly due to the help of the FLHW Board and the wonderful volunteers. This year we will be selling limited edition, commemorative discs. Even if you do not play disc golf, please consider buying one to help support the cause! Discs are $25 including shipping (domestic). Email me at ‘info at flhw.org’ if you are interested. We’ve already had some sales, which is great. There is a picture of the disc below. We appreciate everyone’s support! The picture on the front of the disc was taken at last year’s event.

Have a great week-end!

There is an app for that!

Advanced Prostate Cancer, Apple, David Emerson, FLHW, iPhone, MTB Mobile -

It took some time to develop, but the final version of the FLHW iPhone App is complete and ready to download. If you are using an iPhone or iTouch, click the image below to download. You can also go to the iTunes store and search for ‘FLHW’. It’s free, please go download today and let me know what you think. There is a lot of information on FLHW as well as on Prostate Cancer in general. You can also share with friends, etc. via Facebook and Twitter.

I owe all of this to a company here in Kansas City, MTB Mobile. Jeff and Andy put a lot into this little app, and they did all of it out of the goodness of their hearts. Thanks to both of you for all your hard work and persistence through the Apple approval process.

2009, you were good to us!

Advanced Prostate Cancer, David Emerson, Faith-Love-Hope-WIn, FLHW, Prostate Cancer Foundation -

2009, where have you gone?

It seems like just a few weeks ago we were wrapping up 2008.

Today we closed the year for the Faith, Love, Hope, Win Foundation by making our annual donation to the Prostate Cancer Foundation. I am proud to announce that for 2009 our donation is the same as 2008, $32,000!

To raise that much money, in the midst of this economy makes me so proud of all that have helped throughout the year. Two poker events, a disc golf tournament, the greenhouse event and of course the golf tournament.

I’m a little speechless right now. In just four and a half years FLHW has raised over $132,000!!

We couldn’t have done any of it without the help of all the players, sponsors, friends and family.

God bless you all.

Lucky Sevens

charity poker, David Emerson, FLHW, Prostate Cancer Foundation, PSA, texas Hold 'em -


Monday the 7th we held our 7th FLHW Texas Hold ’em Poker Tournament. We started these in 2006 as another way to spread the word about Prostate Cancer screening as well as to allow people that may not play golf to come out for a good time and to help support FLHW.

Over the past three years the poker tournaments have raised approximately $10,000 of the overall $132,000 we have raised for the Prostate Cancer Foundation. I was rather proud when I added this up on Monday before the tournament.
At this week’s event we had 42 players and raised slightly more than $1,500! It was really great to see a number of first timers. I hope they enjoyed themselves and will come back for future events! The room and tables were packed! In the end Brad took first and Tim second.

I really enjoyed the evening and am looking forward to our next poker event in February!

Also on Monday I had my monthly doctor visit, Lupron shot, PSA test and quarterly Zometa infusion. The meeting with Dr. V was rather quick. My PSA rose to 108.8. We decided to maintain the current regimen through the holidays. I am feeling great and the other tests were in the normal range. When I return next month, on January 4th, as long as I remain pain free and my PSA remains somewhat stable, we will just continue on. (All of the pictures are here).

Something new for FLHW

Advanced Prostate Cancer, David Emerson, FLHW, PCa -

I am proud to announce the launch of the new and improved www.flhw.org
go check it out when you have a minute!

I owe a tremendous thanks to the site designer, Joyce Hutchings. She’s a co-worker from years and years ago at Sprint. Joyce put a lot of time into updating the site and teaching me the basics on updating it as well. I think she did a fantastic job and hope after looking it over, you agree. As I always say, the kindness of friends and strangers never ceases to amaze me, Joyce thank you very, very much!

There are still a few tweaks for me to include but as it stands, it is ready for prime time. Please poke around the site and let me know what you think!

After all this, I’m not done! Up next, it’s kind of a secret but I’ll just say “Yes, there is an app for that.”!

Today’s number is the number 5

David Emerson, FLHW, golf tournament -

Friday was the 5th Annual FLHW Golf Tournament. After a complete day of relaxation on Saturday, yesterday it was time to further relax, reflect and enjoy time with Mary and Brad.

Mary and I spent a few hours at the Plaza Art Fair. We walked out a little lighter in the wallet after finding a photographer that had beautiful shots of Anna Maria Island. The Rod & Reel and The City Pier are two of our favorite places to eat when visiting, I can’t wait to return.

Back to Friday. I knew it was going to be a good day when Mary and I woke up well rested after sleeping through the night. As you can imagine, the night before is usually filled with last minute tasks and stress. This year things were different, easier. It’s like we had done this before! When I let Buck out at 6:30 the sky was an absolute remarkable shade of blue. The best way to describe it is the shade of the Prostate Cancer ribbon. The temperature was crisp and in the high 50’s. I stood on the back porch looking at this:



The day went off without a hitch. We once again had a full field of 144 golfers. I started the round with comments but this year it was a little different, quite a bit more emotional. I got choked up a few times but made it through my little speech without blubbering. Talking about my case in front of crowds has always been hard and the mere mention of Mary’s name almost brought me to tears. After that though we had a fantastic time. We had a number of people come up and tell us that this was by far the best golf tournament that they had ever played in! Quite a compliment that touches me deeply.

I’ll follow this post tomorrow with a link to all the pictures I have so far, For now, I thank God for the weather and the blessings of our generous and compassionate family, friends and supporters that continue to give us strength and hope. Without them, it would have been just another golf tournament, with them, it was far, far more!