I got some bad news last night.

I was at our monthly Relay for Life Captains’ Meeting in Somerset. Before the meeting, one of the Committee members told me she had run into a woman on one of our regular teams. Her son had had IBS that had recently turned out to be NET. A few minutes later, another committee member told me the young man had died within the last few days.

Any death disturbs me. To quote John Donne, “Every man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.” But deaths from NET–especially cases of NET that have been mistaken for IBS–disturb me at a deeper level. Each one of those I somehow feel responsible for. It is foolish, I know. There is nothing I could have done in the last 18 months to speed up the search for a cure–or even for more accurate diagnoses–than I have already done. But it does confirm for me that I have made the right choice about what I currently need to be doing.

Over the last three days, I have hit on the first three purposes of the non-profit corporation we are setting up to help fight–and eventually kill–this disease. We need to educate more people about it, we need to do more research about it, and we need to create more people to research and treat the disease.

But none of that will happen without the financial resources necessary to fund those endeavors.

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has already made a substantial commitment to education and research in this area. In the time since Jane’s death, they have launched the Program in Neuroendocrine and Carcinoid Cancer. The program involves a staff of 18, including six MDs–among them Dr. Chan, who was Jane’s oncologist and Dr. Kulke, who leads the project and is one of the leaders in the field of this little known cancer–as well as a nurse practitioner, nurses, social workers, Ph.Ds and other researchers. A staff that size requires a substantial financial commitment far beyond what Walking with Jane has been able to bring to the table at this point– and DFCI has clearly made that kind of commitment. Eventually, we need to be able to match that financial level of commitment–and exceed it.

Our fourth–and final–goal then is to raise funds to support education, research and the scholarships we hope will create the next generation of researchers. Raising that kind of money will not happen overnight. Last year, we raised and donated just under $37,000 through the Relay for Life, the Marathon Walk, and donations made in Jane’s memory to Dana-Farber. My conservative, back-of-the-envelope figuring tells me we can hope to raise at least $70,000 this year–and that doubling last year should be reasonably possible.

To most of you reading this–and to me–that seems an unbelievably large sum. It is more money than I made in any single year of my working life. But it is a raindrop in the ocean compared to what we will need to spend just next year if we are going to find a cure within my lifetime.

But, as my sister-in-law reminded me last week, “The journey of ten thousand miles begins with a single step.” We have taken that step–now it is time for the next–so that some day the news that someone has NET will not be a precursor to their death.