If you are a regular reader of these posts, you know I am engaged in a war on multiple fronts. I know some of you will object to the term “war”: there are no bullets flying, and the annihilation of our national identity and way of life is not at issue in our struggle against cancer in general or NET in specific.

But there are lots of casualties–ranging from the very young to the very old. And the impact of a single person’s struggle with cancer can have a dramatic impact on the identity of their family and the identity of their community. Jane’s case alone has changed lives in both positive and negative ways. When we lost her, we lost a strong voice against ignorance and intolerance. We also lost a strong presence whose influence on future classroom teachers we can never know. We certainly lost the books she planned to write every bit as permanently as we lost the poems Joyce Kilmer might have written had he survived World War I.

And we can say that about many others whose lives cancer has taken from us.

Her death has changed the trajectory of my life as well. The book on journalism I would like to write remains stalled virtually in the place it was when Jane’s decline began. My political plans are on hiatus–perhaps permanently. My brother, a Seattle police officer, and I have talked about PTSD–and the symptoms are there. Jane and I were battle-buddies in the War on Ignorance. And the cancerous bullet that killed her in our joint foxhole has left the bits of her life splattered on me to the same traumatic effect as a lead bullet to her body.

Ignorance is still out there: ignorance about other people, ignorance about war, ignorance about science and medicine and death, ignorance about so many things.

None of us can fight ignorance alone. None of us can fight cancer alone. We can try–but we will fail.

My hand may do the majority of the reading and the writing here, but this website is underpinned by a dozen other folks who make sure it works–and by the research of dozens of others in labs and clinics across the country–and across the planet–who are engaged daily in trying to figure out what makes NET tick and how to cure it. I am just a reporter–a columnist–trying to put a human face on a battle in a small village–a battle that may prove completely inconsequential in the long-term–or prove to be quite the opposite.

And I have no way of knowing.

What I do know is this: we need your help in order to be successful.

The Greater Fall River Relay for Life is off to a great start–and Walking with Jane, in terms of money raised, is way ahead of last year. But there are only ten of us on the team right now–and we are going to need a lot more physical help between now and the end of that campaign. We need people to help with putting on fundraisers. We need people to walk the track and man the site. We need people’s’ time even more than we need their money.

I launched my Jimmy Fund Marathon Walk Campaign two weeks ago. Last year, we raised over $4,300 for that event. My personal goal is to get to $5,000 this year. But I want to recruit some other folks to walk all or part of it with me this September. If my personal numbers go down as a result but more people raise more money, I am fine with that. The goal here is not about me but about giving the researchers the money they need to fight this thing.

And finally, we need help with this website. We need writers who can talk about what it is to have this disease. We need writers who are also researchers who can talk about their latest discoveries and their latest reasons to hope. And we need caregivers who can write about their perspective on helping a loved one battle this disease.

There is lots of work to do in this vineyard. We need more help to do it.