I hope you use these cards on late nights finishing a heated game, killing time with a quick game at the airport or before your meal comes at dinner, gathered around the table teaching your family a new game, or showing a delighted friend a magic trick. I hope they get worn around the edges, bent from when you couldn’t find the eight of hearts but turns out you were sitting on it. I hope they get stained from when coffee got spilled on it after a triumphant victory. I hope you love them, but more importantly, I hope you love the memories you make with them.

A major goal of The Commons is to create an all-in-one facility. This space would become a home away from home and hopefully, patients would find a family within the fellow guests, staff, and volunteers. This will become a place they’ll want to spend time instead of dreading. It will remind them that their lives are not less valuable and don't’ have to be less joyous just because they’re sick. They can still play, have fun, and be a kid. Their health does not define them. These young adults deserve a beautiful space. This is their life. They shouldn’t have to wait for their struggles to be over to start living. They are still in control, still powerful, capable of anything. Their lives are beautiful right now.

So that another young man can be treated by an experimental drug that allows him to follow his heart. So that he can go on adventures, say yes to new things, climb mountains, swim in the ocean, take risks, and fall in love. So that another young man can walk away cured.

There are a lot of stories like mine and like Nick’s. So until there is a cure, we have work to do. Let’s honor them. Let us run, let us walk, let us fight.