I attended my first PhotoShop World in Las Vegas in 2008, and met a number of people I’ve stayed in touch with since that time. Some I’ve reconnected with at subsequent PSWs, and more via email and Twitter. A lot of them are listed on the blogroll page of this website too!
One not listed there is a woman from Vancouver, named Tina Chin. She is an amazing photo retouch-er who taught me a lot of simple tricks in Photoshop. We exchange occasional emails but its hard to stay in contact when you live a continent apart, and Tina hasn’t been back to PSW since 2008. But in her most recent email she told me her son has been diagnosed with Leukemia and is going through chemo treatments and a lot of hospital stays. (Luckily the disease he has is treated in over 90% of the cases.)
Tina took a lot of pictures with her iPhone during Aidan’s first month of treatment (I’m sure to help deal with the stress), and she had put them together into a YouTube video. Some very stark images of dealing with cancer, and how traumatic it can be when the person is so young. Here is the video: