If politics makes for strange bedfellows, the fight against cancer may create even stranger.
I love the people involved locally with the Relay For Life of Greater Fall River. I am impressed by the people who work in the first two tiers of the bureaucracy in the region. They strike me as people who really get it. It’s the higher-ups I worry about–and who do not make me 100 percent comfortable.
When Jane first got the diagnosis that she was probably looking at cancer–though it would take a biopsy to be sure–her doctor had her talk privately with one of his nurses. The woman was very involved with the Relay for Life. She tried to offer some comfort to Jane that day–and has since become a good friend to me and the other members of Walking with Jane.
I had heard about Relay for years. A number of my students were involved with it. They had lost brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers to the disease and talked about the solace the event brought them. They had told me how it helped them feel they were part of something that enabled them to fight back–to channel their anger at the deaths in a constructive way.
The Relay for Life was
the only general anti-cancer event I knew of when Jane died–other than the Pan Mass Challenge, a biking event I knew was physically beyond what I believed I could do—-and that night I silently vowed I would walk the entire 24 hours of a Relay that spring.
In May we contacted two local Relays, put together Walking with Jane, and started figuring out how to raise money. While we cannot earmark where the money goes that we raise for the American Cancer Society through the Relay, one can do worse than learn the ropes from what is the biggest single event fundraising machine in the world.
We made an immediate and outsized splash. In under two months we raised over $3,500. We embraced the idea of having someone on the track at all times–cancer never sleeps so neither would we. Our first Relay was in Taunton–and we figured out quickly all the things we had done wrong. And there were lots of them. We were rookies and we looked like rookies.
We were still rookies when we arrived at Somerset High School for the Fall River event at the end of June. We were overwhelmed by the size and scale of the event. Where Taunton had attracted hundreds of people, Greater Fall River attracted thousands.
This year I serve as the chairperson for the Relay for Life of Greater Fall River. The event raised just over $308,000 last year. Walking with Jane raised just over $4,300 of that. We won the Spirit Award at that Relay.
Figuring out what gets spent on what at the higher levels is less clear. I asked how much ACS spent last year on NET and CS. No one could really give me an answer to that question, though the head of the district office did try to get one. The record keeping on that kind of thing is a bit convoluted.
I’ve written the new England Regional CEO about increasing funding for NET/CS. He has written me that he has passed it on to the national chief medial officer with a positive push. I have not heard back from him yet.
(Next: Caring for Carcinoid and the Carcinoid Cancer Foundation finish my disclosures.)
