The list grows!

So, as just mentioned, there's a Dragon Leatherworks Talon being raffled off here.

The Dragon hisownself is raffling of a Viper on his site.

Rimfire Designs is raffling off a set of grips.

And then NFO kicked it to 11, and is raffling a Colt Diamondback and other goodies.

Carteach0 has kicked in an ISSC M-22, which looks to be a .22 shaped like a Block Glock. (I believe that's going to be part of NFO's raffle.)

McThag is auctioning a Spike's stripped lower - worth its weight in gold as of three days ago!

(I should note that each of these raffles is being run separately; entering for my holster doesn't get you into Dragon's raffle, or Rimfire Designs, or NFO's. So click those links for details.)

I don't talk about it much, but about four years ago I had two surgeries in a row to try to deal with a kidney stone*. These were not horribly invasive surgeries, as things go; they just roto-rootered my schwanz and stuck a tube between my kidney and bladder, then beat the hell out of me with ultrasound. Twice. The week of time between placement and removal was pure misery; I did the first one, passed blood and rocks for a week of pain, had the tube removed, and quickly learned they hadn't gotten it all (by "learned" I mean "was writhing in pain again within twenty-four hours"). So I was given another week to recover, then repeated the process. There's still a piece floating around in there, too.

The grand total billed to my insurance was in the neighborhood of $18,000 for that little go-round. X-ray, ultrasound, a couple of CT scans, anesthesia (twice), etc. No knife ever touched my body, which would have changed a lot of things - like going from a moderate sedative and spinal block to full-on paralytic and intubation, and a lot more cost.

Sounds like Tam's adventure won't be too bad... but I gar-on-tee it won't be cheap, either. So if you can, pick one of the above and pitch in.

* - "funny" moment from the whole thing. Doctor gets the ultrasound results and shows them to me, then says, "Well, the stone is about nine millimeters in diameter, which is about the size of a-" and I started laughing, "Yeah, doc, I know how big nine millimeters is." Never did find out what his analogy was going to be, come to think of it...