The more you experience, the more you tend to believe, “there are no accidents.” Except occasionally in your pants. I have since hosted "Cool Comedy-Hot Cuisine" over 30 times. It was such a moving night for me that I personally promised Sharon that I would be there the following year. The first year I went, Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O’Donnell performed as well. Savenok / Getty Images for Scleroderma Research Foundation) Robin returned for a total of five times, helping Sharon to raise millions for research programs and the Centers of Excellence at Johns Hopkins, Duke, Stanford and UCSF, among other universities and major medical institutions.Ĭool Comedy - Hot Cuisine, A Benefit For The Scleroderma Research Foundation (Ilya S. I was a performer and later served as its host. The beautiful, generous Robin Williams was the first performer to stand up for this cause. It was a night of comedians and amazing food by well-known chefs Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken. That was the best way to fund-raise for this difficult disease - through humor. Performing and hosting benefits were the only ways to fund research dedicated to finding a cure, or, at the very least, finding ways to put the disease into some kind of remission.
Sharon had originally cold-called me to perform standup at a benefit in Santa Monica she had titled “Cool Comedy-Hot Cuisine.” I knew nothing about scleroderma. She was the founder and then CEO of the Scleroderma Research Foundation - a great woman, a mother of three who’d been stricken with the disease herself as a young mom. It began 25 years ago when I met Sharon Monsky, a woman who was to become one of the dearest friends of my life. I became familiar with scleroderma several years before my sister came down with it. In other patients, the blood vessels are predominantly affected, leading to profound loss of lung function over an extended period of time. "No one should have to suffer as my sister Gay did.Scleroderma is an incurable chronic disease which means “hard skin.” In some patients scarring forms in the lungs and on the skin, changing a person’s appearance. "I wanted to do something about it - to share our family's story with others and let them know that they aren't alone in this battle," the actor wrote for Today. "One year later, Gay lost her life to it."Īs he said in his autobiography, he struggled with losing "two of the most important women in my life." But he coped with his grief by trying to help other women suffering with scleroderma by fundraising for the foundation. "So, just three years after I found out what 'scleroderma' was, my sister was sitting in the audience at the benefit, now actually diagnosed with this orphan disease," he revealed in an essay for Today. The comic had coincidentally performed at a benefit for the Scleroderma Research Foundation years before, alongside comics like Robin Williams, Ellen Degeneres, and Rosie O'Donnell.
SCLERODERMA GAY SAGET SKIN
According to The Mayo Clinic, scleroderma is a chronic condition that primarily harms the skin but can also gradually affect internal organs.