• Tara Strong and #TeamOllieOxen Need Your Help!

    (Click this image to help!)

    Update: Olivia's mother posted a recent summary of her progress in the comments.

    ---

    For those of you who follow Tara Strong on Twitter (hint: she voices that purple princess on the right), you've probably seen #TeamOllieOxen pop up on her timeline. It's a given that someone with her following is going to get flooded with all kinds of GoFundMe campaigns and retweet requests, but after talking with her at BronyCon and SDCC, I learned this was something of a special case.

    Olivia is a fourteen-year-old girl battling metastasized lung cancer diffuse large B cell lymphoma (Edit: thank you, Kristin!) and immune system complications. And it's more than just Tara knowing this young woman personally -- her two sons have been her friends since kindergarten.

    As you'd hope to expect, Olivia's folks have thrown everything at pursuing the medically-indicated standard of care for her disease: chemotherapy regimens, broad-spectrum antibiotics, whatever it takes to keep her alive.

    You can begin to imagine what the hospital bills are looking like. Thankfully, as of this posting, Olivia is still with us.

    If you're willing and able to donate some funds to Olivia's care, you can find #TeamOllieOxen primarily on GoFundMe. Olivia's caretakers have also set up Facebook and Twitter accounts to follow for those so inclined.

    Regardless of whether you choose to donate to or share the campaign with your more affluent friends and followers, I'm sure Tara would love nothing more than to hear about it. Shout her up on Twitter when you're done so she can call you "puddin'" and all the other names you never heard during your childhood.