World's Greatest Shave

A little history for you all first up. While I was growing up, I was very sick. I was in and out of hospitals from the age of 6 until I was 9 just while they were trying to work out what was wrong with me. Eventually I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease, which has done a pretty significant number on my internal workings, so much so that some of them are external workings these days thanks to the colostomy bag.

Even with the health troubles I suffered, and the severity of my illness, I always felt like an imposter when every other kid in the ward had some kind of terminal and/or life shortening disease. My hospital friends had cystic fibrosis, spina bifida, leukaemia, renal failure, and the list goes on and on. While I just have Crohn's disease.

The connection that I had to these kids, and some of their families has made me see just how much help they need to live some kind of life, even if it's just the chance of getting away from doctors and hospitals and all the medical things of their everyday life. I know how much my parents and siblings gave up to get me through.

As a result of my time spent with all these kids and their families and the staff that look after them, I have done multiple fundraising events to help them. Relating just to this specific fundraiser, this is my fourth time taking part, having done my first one in 2010. Each time I've done the full shave, going with a smooth scalp. My hair this time around doesn't seem as long as it has been in the past, but it's still quite reasonable. Stretched out we guess that the ponytail is about 20 cm long, though with the curls it bunches up and looks shorter.

^{My hair, as at December 24. Yes this is from when I proposed.}

So what am I asking of you?

• Upvote this post I will donate the value of this post (up to $100) in the name of steemit.
• Sponsor me independently by going to my fundraising page
• Spread the message. Either sharing this post, or making your own and linking back to mine.
• Join in the fundraising by signing up and committing to either shaving or colouring your own hair.
• Run a fundraising post to do a separate sponsorship. I will 100% upvote (about $0.40 currently) any fundraising post for this cause you link me to.

If enough of you want to join in, I'll set up a team (with steemit in it's name) and see if we can't get the name in front of many other eyes)

I've got over 400 followers. If each of you sponsor me $2, then steemit people alone would cover my entire target for this years shave. I recognise that a bunch of them are idle/abandoned/whatever, but it's still not a lot for just my readers to cover the initial target I set.