I am continually faced with this challenge. The disease brings with it uncertainty in my life and whether I will be here for a long time. The number one dream I have is to know my son as an adult. He is currently 9 years old so I have a long time to wait to meet him as an adult. During this time I need to make sure my life is filled with experiences that I enjoy - I need to fulfil my dreams.

Last July I fulfilled one of my dreams and that was to sing at a concert in front of thousands of people. I sang with Human Nature in front of about 8,000 people. I cannot tell you how I felt when this dream was realised. I was able to spend so much time not thinking about having cancer - it was a dream I lived for. When I was lucky enough to achieve this I wanted to give other people like me the opportunity to fulfil a dream - hence dreams2live4. dreams2live4 also want to make the Oncology ward of Prince of Wales hospital a nicer area. People like me need to spend a great deal of time being treated either with chemotherapy or radiation in the hospital - commonly for months and months. From a patient’s point of view most of the areas desperately need a revamp. In some cases we would even like a TV that had sound.

Luckily for me Phil Grove knew me, my story and saw a documentary which was aired last September on Andrew Denton's “Enough Rope” featuring me and my story.

Phil and I had a conversation about the Dry July concept last year and his willingness to help dreams2live4. We have managed to satisfy a great deal of dreams for patients - such as meeting famous people like Terence Tao, James Valentine and Richard Glover, visiting places with children that they have always dreamed of going to, skiing particular runs in Japan, wanting to see Phantom of the Opera, wanting to spend a day having a make over and so on.

A great deal of people living with cancer do not think they deserve dreams - we know they do - we want to make their life, however much they have remaining, exciting and to take their minds off their disease. We want to also be able to provide them with an environment within the hospital that will also enable them to take their minds off having their disease.

I cannot believe the amount of money Dry July has raised to date and we are not even half way through July - it is unbelievable. We are hoping that when we walk in to the Prince of Wales Oncology section it will be an environment that is fresh, has new furniture, the doctors and nurses have an up to date office and chemotherapy administration area which meets their needs. We would love to see that this was all created by Dry July and the wonderful team of Dry July.

4 weeks ago I had a tumour removed from my brain. I have just started another round of chemotherapy which will take the next 4 months. I hope during that time we have a plan and the money to improve the environment I will be in for the next 4 months. I also hope that during this time I can find some more people like me that have dreams and work towards making them happen for the patients. I have the next 4 months to think about some more dreams for myself as well.

I hope you all are heartily raising money for this more than worthy cause. For those of you that can make it along, I look forward to meeting you for a drink on the 1st August and celebrate the raising of the money for the Dry July of 2008.

All the best to you,
Annie Robinson."