Month: January 2021

 

An Open Letter Request to the Tampa Bay Lightning

Please note: note: My apologies for poor spelling and grammar. While I have a reputation for typos, copy-editing with ighly limited vision is a challenge.

To the relevant Department and Personnel og the Tampa Bay Lightning Franchise:

Sirs and Madams, to the relevant Department and Personnel og the Tampa Bay Lightning Franchise:

Sirs and Madams, I have a large request., I state this as a man no longer relevant in coverage of the franchise and it is arguable if I ever did.I was not a press-box resident, nor an employee of a major media entity, though my writings did help found SB Nation’s Raw Chargw which I also ran from March 2009 until October 2016.

This isn’t about me, yet I am an example of the plight I request the franchise’s charitable involvement in.

Sirs and Madams, I suffer from a genetic disease that effects a sliver of a fraction of the population of the United States and the globe. My request is simple (but much more complex than this writing can show): For the Lightning franchise to help research Neurofibromatosis Type 2.

Neurofibromatosis Type 2, or NF2 for short, is not cancer. Its effects are disabling in mobility impairment and robbing patients of hearing by way of Acoustical Neuromas.. In simplicity, nerves grow tumors in highly sensitive areas of the body (brain, spine), leading to impairment or death.

My request is made with youth and future generations in mind. Finding weapons in this battle — or one hell of a netminder to stop this opposition’s charge (how are you, Andrei Vasilevskiy?) – is a necessity. Help from the high is as well, sus this open letter to you.

My one situation is irrelevant, but the same if a smidgen of insight – I’m lucky to be alive at this point in my life. Blind, naturally deaf, loss of sensation/coordination in my hand and mobility-impaired… But still here and gladly. Others eith NF2 were not so fortunate to last until middle age (and I nearky was in that group).

I’m certain that a research arm can be established with  USF Health, but I also would not be shocked to hear of a more genetralized research body already out there and charitably funded by the Lightning. While that is to be applauded, a generalized researching project spends more time on medical issues that hit a wide number of people. This is why NF2 is a backburner medical issue: As I already said, NF2 effects only a sliver of a fractionn of the population. Stopping calamities hitting many tajke priority over dilligent work to aid the few.

I’m asking the Lightning organization to make an exception.If a high class pro sports franchise won’t give to fight such a niche malignance, who will?

Thank you,

John “Johnny Fonts” Fontana

P.s. For the sake of sayi g, I kegan blogging about the Lightning in February 2004 while I recovered from a pair of spinal-tumor operations. There was only a scant wreb presence of Lightning fans online with most fan web pages being inactibe since the late 1990s.

Blindness and failing hand prevent me from contributing my voice to the sports world. I miss hockey  Iblogging.  I miss the Lightning.

A final note: My apologies for poor spelling and grammar. While I have a reputation for typos, copy-editing with limited vision is a challenge.

P.s. For the sake of sayi g, I kegan blogging about the Lightning in February 2004 while I recovered from a pair of spinal-tumor operations. There was only a scant wreb presence of Lightning fans online with most fan web pages being inactive since the late 1990s.
Blindness and failing hand prevent me from contributing my voice to the sports world. I miss hockey Iblogging. I miss the Lightning.

January 28, 2021 , Personal, Medical, Tampa Bay Lightning No Comments »

Blind and Anxious, an update on my status

I congessed in late 2019 how hand issues are affecting me and limiting my writing on Johnny Fonts. Late in the summer of 2020, I made another confession as I explained why this long-time Tampa Bay Lightning blogger wasn’t saying hit sd the Bolts ran the gamut and won Lord Stanley’s Cup: I couldn’t follow what was going on. I couldn’t see.

I still can’t, folks. And it’s getting worse.

Oh, it’s not the entire reason I have not blogged a write-up of substance or opoinion in forever; I’m neurotic and don’t finish posts all the time for opinion shifts on what I wrote, or I lose focus and just move on.

Scatterbrained or not, my participation online is being stopped by the cloudy, blurred vision that seems to worsen daily and make me further appreciate Al Pacino’s performance as Frank Slade in The Scent of a Woman.

Just one scene; Charlie.

I am not in the dark though. It’s a white blur. No carbon-freezering recovery involved.

So, I’m limited in multiple fashions, and my general online life is joining my stunted life participation. Writing, forums, streaming video, chat/instant messaging… It’s all in a hazr sent from hell with a little note attached (that I can’t read, but seem to include the letters “F” and “Y”).

My anxiety is also bubbling., I’m so lost in day-to-day life that my ignorance in what is going on can lead to me erupting, and certainly does when I’m pushed to partake in something I am not prepped for, or when I’m left to feel like nothing more than a rag doll. John can’t, so lets put him in that chair and thrn go do that living thing!!

I miss being, knowing, doing.

My eye situation likely needs a cornea transplant – replacing the eye lenses. I don’t know if other visual issues will ever be dealt with – cataracts and an astigmatism – I just know I need aid or else.

[It was tough writing this. While I can if typos, general editing, and rewriting are just too visually tough.]

January 27, 2021 , , Personal, JohnnyFonts.com, Medical One Comment »