In the meantime, here are some suggestions for ways to commemorate Frozen Pea Friday besides monetary contributions:

1. Mike Gunderloy (@MikeG1) is donating platelets to his local Red Cross today. This is an excellent suggestion for any day of the week, but it’s especially meaningful to those of us at Frozen Pea Fund because chemo patients often need blood or platelets. Check out this post by Kate, who is battling pancreatic cancer and just received two units of blood and additional platelets.

2. Blog about the Frozen Pea Fund or tell your friends about it. Our donation widget is down temporarily, but we’re not going anywhere.

3. Change your avatar on Twitter, Facebook, or other social networking site to a peavatar. Don’t know what that is? Check out the Frozen Pea Friday group on Flickr. And if you haven’t uploaded your peavatar to Flickr, please do so.

4. Add your name to the Frappr map for the Frozen Pea Fund.

5. Check out SharingHope.tv, a new video project by the American Cancer Society that allows people to share their cancer stories in their own way. Here’s what Susan Reynolds had to say about SharingHope.

– Connie Reece

Susan Reynolds and Connie Reece (or Laverne and Shirley as they referred to themselves after viewing this video) finally got to meet in person this week when Susan and her husband, Bill, flew to Austin for meetings. Frozen Pea Friday #10 marked a milestone: incorporation and trademark papers have been filed. When completed, the Frozen Pea Fund will be a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation.

There will be a lot more to report in the coming weeks, so stay tuned. For now, Susan and Connie want to thank you for supporting those who, like Susan, are battling breast cancer, and for your support of cancer research and awareness through the Frozen Pea Fund.

It’s been 9 weeks since Frozen Pea Fund began and we’re still going strong with over $8,000 raised so far. The response from the community and *beyond* our social media community has been amazing. Susan is an inspiring woman and by sharing her story has shown not only the power of social media but shown the power of giving and make an effort at change. Donating the cost of a couple of bags of frozen peas to the fund is EASY! Donating helps people like Susan and my grandmother and millions of other people in the world that are suffering every day and fighting hard for their lives.

The American Cancer Society is an organization that is dedicated to eliminating cancer and minimizing suffering from cancer. They are the people that are working hard to fund research that is searching for a cure.

To those who have donated time and again, we thank you so much for supporting cancer research by donating to ACS and the Frozen Pea Fund. It’s YOU who have made a difference.

The campaign, which actually lasts five days, is called My ooVoo Day. In lieu of compensating each of the participating hosts, ooVoo will make a contribution of $1,500; most have chosen to donate their fee to the Frozen Pea Fund.

This is a win-win-win-win situation. ooVoo will have several hundred people test-driving their service, readers get to connect with some of their favorite bloggers, who get increased exposure in the marketplace, and a worthy cause gets its first corporate donation.

In addition, Susan Reynolds and Connie Reece will be hosting their own video chat sessions on Sunday, February 10, on the topic From Connections to Community: How Online Relationships Enrich Our Lives.

Founder of Every Dot Connects, Connie is a communications specialist with three decades of experience as a writer, speaker and consultant. She is Executive Director of Social Media Club and helped establish the Frozen Pea Fund. Both Connie and Susan were networking online in the pre-Internet days and have honed their relationship-building skills through a variety of social media. In Boobs on Ice Susan shares openly about her cancer diagnosis and the role online community has come to play in her journey.

Each chat session can accommodate four people, and 18 slots were filled the first day. To register, go to My ooVoo Day, download the software (available for Mac users too–only at this link), and then sign up for an open seat.

Here’s a rundown of the times and topics Connie and Susan will be available to talk about:

Session 1 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. EST — Building Connections and Networking Online
(four 15-minute time slots available)
Topics: Finding and Friending; Your Profile Is Your Personal Brand; Cultivating Relationships

Session 2 4:00 to 4:30 p.m. EST — Taking it Face to Face: stories of meetups and tweetups (three 10-minute time slots)

Session 3 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. EST — When Connections Become a Community
(four 15-minute time slots)
Topics: How Online Communities Celebrate, Grieve; How to Talk to Someone About Cancer or Crisis; Give the Present of Your Presence

Immediately following this session, it’s strictly birthday chat with Susan — sign up for the party at the separate My ooVoo Day listing:

Update: The Birthday Party time slots are already filled! Check back later to see if we are able to add any additional times to wish Susan the happiest of birthdays.

In this week’s FPF video, Susan Reynolds, the woman behind (under, er, yeah) the peas was interviewed by Channel 9 WUSA about frozen peas, Twitter and how the movement got started. See the video below.

I join Susan in her gratefulness of this community for their generous donations to the Frozen Pea Fund and the American Cancer Society. I’m proud to be a member of a community that stands up for something remarkable and supports one another wholeheartedly.

Forward Podcast, hosted by Paull Young (@paullyoung), with guests Susan Reynolds and Craig Colgan, writer of the Washington Post story featuring Susan.

The Social Mediasphere, hosted by Tris Hussey (@trishussey) and Jim Turner (@genuine), with guests Susan Reynolds and Connie Reece.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rmPE55o1TY[/youtube]

Many thanks to Jeffrey Sass (@sass) for this video and for his outstanding work with the premiere social networking rehab center, Invitations.

1. Susan’s 2 surgeries (mastectomy and reconstruction) went well and report on lymph nodes came back negative, an encouraging sign. She’s resting well in a private room (finally!) and it’s possible she may be released on Saturday.

2. In the first 15 hours after launch, we raised $3,493 for the Frozen Pea Fund. Cathleen Rittereiser rounded it off to $3,500 and, as promised, is kicking in an additional amount because we met her challenge goal of exceeding a certain amount by a certain time. (Sorry, the exact amount is lost in a mountain of emails and tweets.)

3. Donations came from 118 peaple on 3 continents. While the money will fund research and programs in the U.S., generous-hearted souls from other countries are able to give to the Frozen Pea Fund using the ACS donation form.

3. 272 members of the Frozen Pea Friday group on Flickr have uploaded 262 peavatars. For most of the day, Twitter was awash in green.

4. Susan Reynolds hit the #1 spot on the Tweeterboard. Most of the top 10 most popular today and this week were sporting peavatars!

5. Duncan Riley’s post on TechCrunch was a highlight of a wave of blog coverage; it also was mentioned on the official Twitter blog and was picked up on the front page of the technology section of BBC News online.

The Society has invested more in breast cancer research grants over time than any other voluntary public health organization – $322.7 million since 1972! And it was the American Cancer Society that established mammography as the gold standard for the early detection of breast cancer.

When I discovered a very thick area in my breast I called the doctor. The next day I was in her office. A half hour after that I was in the diagnostic radiologist’s.

A full afternoon and multiple stab wounds later we had a variety of samples of malignant tentacles of tissue that were on their way to the lab.

I was in a little pain – it would increase as the local anesthetic wore off – but left his office with a soft cold pack in my bra.

To keep bleeding down & relieve pain I’d need to keep things cool. Traditional ice packs are hard and heavy. As much as I try to be a good sport I’m not into having a brick sitting on my chest.

Enter a bag of frozen peas.

I tucked it in my bra, took a picture, and was ready to tell the story later that night. That bag of peas added a touch of lightness to what could have been a sad and serious tale.

• A bag of peas was something everybody could relate to.
• Some people love them, some hate them, some use them for their own injuries.
• A bag of frozen peas was a vehicle for conversation and let people tease me instead of having to cry.
• It let people share instead of bemoaning.

I napped a lot during the first few days after the biopsy. The news was sudden and stunning after all and my body was being assaulted.

Mmmm peas for lunch?

When I fell asleep with peas in my cleavage I’d wake to the smell of freshly cooked peas. That made the story funnier, and more human. Of course I shared it because what is life but a series of stories.

After enough cooked peas I moved on to baggies with ice cubes or larger gel-packs which truth be told still are too big and too heavy to be comfy but help with pain.

The peas however live on in the form of stories from others about their use of pea-packs and the line-up of twitter avatars sporting peas in support of my struggle.

This makes them a comfort in more than one way.