We need your help... Please spread the word!!

Wonderful news!!

Remember my friend Kim, from The Merits of the Case, whom you saw here in a Thanksgiving post this past weekend? Kim is a wife, mother of three, law student, and is also fighting breast cancer.

Today, I received an email from Kim, telling me that she has been nominated for a very special award. The prize is a $10,000 academic scholarship, and I am hoping that with all of your help, we can help this very deserving woman, and blogger extraordinaire, WIN. Wouldn't it be a wonderful way to commemorate Breast Cancer Awareness Month, if we could all help this Survivor complete her law school education?!

I have cut and pasted a posting from her blog this evening, and I urge you all to read it, and then click on the button at the bottom to cast your vote for the amazing Kimberly Klein. If you would like to help even MORE, please encourage your family and friends to do the same... Either copy this post to your own blogs, and/or email the information to your friends and family.

Thank you!!

And now, over to Kim:

I Need Your Vote!

I haven’t written much about the financial aspect of cancer, but as you can imagine it plays a very big role in all of this. We are very lucky that we have private health insurance that so far has covered a large portion of my medical expenses. And the costs are astronomical. Insurance hasn’t covered it all, however, and we have had to make major adjustments in our spending and budgeting in order to keep our heads above water. We have dipped into and used most of our cash savings and have had to resort to other sources of funds such as college and retirement savings in order to make this work. People don’t talk about this part of it very much because as a society we don’t talk about money, but it has caused me a very high level of stress throughout the entire ordeal. I can’t even imagine how people who do not have insurance deal financially with a cancer diagnosis and treatment.

I am going to law school to fulfill a dream, but there are practical reasons for my choice, as well. We always knew that in order to send three kids to college and to be able to eat when we retire I was going to have to return to work at some point. Right now I am on track to graduate from law school the same month that Karly graduates from high school. That means that in 2009 our mailbox will contain both my new paychecks and new tuition bills. Perfect timing. In addition, I will have to begin making payments on my student loans, which will be in the range of $80,000-$100,000.

Not long ago I stumbled upon a link to a website that was offering a $10,000 Blogging Scholarship to a post-secondary education student blogger. Since I fit the application profile I thought I would go ahead and submit my blog just to see what happened. What happened was that my blog was nominated as one of 20 finalists for the $10,000 scholarship. Needless to say, this scholarship would be an immense help to my family and to me right now.

While I am amazed and ecstatic that writing these posts for you has garnered such a nomination for me, I can’t win it without your help. Twenty blogs have been nominated, but it’s up to the voting public to choose the winner. That’s right…$10,000 will be awarded to a winner chosen by the internets. It’s kind of like American Idol but instead it’s Blogger Idol.

So I am asking for your help and for your vote. Voting is open from now through midnight on October 28, 2007. In order to vote, you can click on this link. On the webpage that comes up you will see a list of 20 names with radio button next to them. My name is 7th on the list and you can see that I have some serious competition. Will you vote for me, and will you ask your friends to vote for me, too? Thank you.