Two years ago this August, I busted out my front teeth in a bicycle accident. I couldn’t afford the dental work necessary to fix them. You, my blogging friends, rallied to the cause and because of you I can smile proudly again.

My situation was not life-threatening. Mine was not even dire. Mine was the result of an accident, but it mattered to you and you helped.

Now, I want to ask your help for someone imminently more deserving. Someone not even 1/20th of my age. Someone who cannot help himself.

Please visit Be Not Afraid and read Cole’s Story. I found out about his plight with hydrocephalus from BlackFive and it touched me.

Years ago, I worked with a young girl who had hydrocephalus. Hers was grave: I met her in the sheltered living environment in which she lived, confined to a bed, smiling at everyone who walked by her door. Her name was Ricky, and she was the same age that I was at the time: fifteen. I, whose biggest worry at the time was whether Kurt Stouffer liked me, learned a thing or two about worries that day. And the next, and the next, and the next two months after that until one day when I came to do my volunteer work and learned that Ricky was gone.

There is no known cure for hydrocephalus, there is only treatment. That treatment is light years ahead of where it was 25 years ago, and yet there is still much work to be done. There is much suffering to be eased, and much therapy to be had. But it’s not free — and, as we all know, the best health care is given when one can afford to pay for the best.

Please help Cole out. Two years old is far too young to have finances decide one’s future.