Roma on my Brain

Friends, I am writing as dedicatedly as I can to finish Strange Plots for you, but first I would like to tell you what's been on our hearts recently.

My sweet five-year old niece Roma, my brother Will's daughter, spent ten days in the hospital in November, including Thanksgiving, while doctors worked on diagnosing the source of bleeding on her brain. The upshot of it is that she's going to have brain surgery, perhaps as soon as Thursday, to remove a cavernoma, an abnormal clump of blood vessels in the brain. So it's not cancer, thank God, and the surgery should permanently resolve this problem. But it's scary to have a five-year-old undergoing brain surgery.

And it is expensive, vastly expensive.

Perhaps you, like me, figure that there would never be any point in asking for money from friends, because if you're already better off than most of the world. But, "Ask and you shall receive," as someone very wise and loving once said. So if you're considering donating five or ten dollars here or there over the holiday season, please think about helping out Roma. And please know that whatever amount is raised here, it will still be a drop in the bucket to the actual costs the family will face.

And thank you, thank you, my dearest friends.