I get a wide range of questions about why I do what I do.

First, there are those who ask why I am so interested in the cancer that killed my wife. After all, people say, it is a rare cancer and it does not affect very many people. And nothing you do now will bring Jane back. There are more important things you could be doing.

Yesterday’s post provides a partial answer to that question. The more I learn about NET, the more I think this form of cancer is far more important–and far less rare–than we have generally thought it to be. And if I am right, then this work I have set myself will have an impact on a greater number of lives than much else that I could be doing right now. Jane’s death haunts me–but the lives of those who have this disease and are still fighting it also drive me. I want them to have the life that Jane and I were denied. And even if their numbers prove to be small, their lives matter.

Others ask me why I don’t then focus on just NET–why I bother with Relay For Life when the money raised there is not directed at NET. Again, yesterday’s post supplies a partial answer: I am not smart enough to know what piece of general or specific cancer research is going to fuel the next piece of knowledge about the NET puzzle. But the truth is larger than that. I sometimes feel like a cancer magnet. My sister and sister-in-law are both breast cancer survivors–in my sister’s case, a survivor of more than a decade from a late Stage III aggressive form of the disease. My brother had a nasty skin cancer some years ago. I have another sister and a very old friend who have both had their thyroids removed. I have a former student with cervical cancer–and another with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. My wife’s cousin has battled cancer in multiple locations over the past several years. One of my oldest friends lost her father to cancer when she was still in junior high school. I lost a favorite uncle to cancer in the 1970s.

And I cannot count the number of students I have had over the years who lost fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers to this foul disease. I cannot turn my back on any of them.

So why do I do the MS Walk, others want to know. Certainly cancer is a huge issue. But MS affects a smaller number than cancer does, they reason.

And that may be. But I watched an old friend’s sister descend into that disease in the early ’70s–watched it cripple her, cripple her marriage, cripple her husband…I have had several friends diagnosed with the disease, as well as my wife’s cousin’s son. It takes little enough to try to help raise the money to help find an answer to that disease.

I do the Walk for Hunger because I know what it is to be hungry. I have lived on ketchup soup and filled my belly with water so I would feel full despite the missing meals. During my college years, there was no such thing as the Boston Food Bank. I have known people who went without so their kids–or their brothers and sisters–could eat.

Buddha reminds us that life is suffering. But suffering can be alleviated if we all make a commitment to do what we can to help those in need. I know I cannot help everyone–but I will help those I can.

I hope you will, too.