Hey everyone!

Thank you so much for visiting my page and hopefully donating to this cause!

I've been shaving my head for St. Baldrick's since the seventh grade, which ultimately means that St. Baldrick's has played a huge role in my own development, and my priorities.

It became a lot more personal just about when I signed up to shave my head for the very first time. My dad was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. I was whisked into a whirlwind of reckoning with treatments I didn't fully understand, as I watched him become a little more irritable at times and a lot more tired at times. Nevertheless, he was strong and fought with all of his might, and certainly all of his clever wit, as we'd all become accustomed to his jokes and his lighthearted attitude about something so serious. Just after my first year in high school, he passed away on June 13th that year. It's been just over four years now that he's been gone from the family.

While I fully understand that St. Baldrick's helps fund research for childhood cancers, which don't include that with which he was diagnosed, there's an element of universality within the entire process: So many people across the world face stories similar and very different to that which my father faced. Hardship, grit, and love might be the three ties between his story and everyone else's.

With acknowledgement that my shaving my head likely won't end the specific type of cancer from which he suffered, I hope that my involvement with this organization, and your donation, will help make other people's lives touched with that same love I'd shared with my father, as he faced his final years. I thank you with all of my heart for donating to St. Baldrick's "on my head," and for taking a stand against a disease so heartbreaking.

We can make a difference; this is just one step.

I wish you all the very best,

Kevin "The Rock" Medansky

(Also many thanks to Lily Hangcheng Xu, who took the "before" photograph on my profile!)