I am facing a crisis of confidence today. I am wondering what the point of all this activity is. I am wondering if I

am really making any difference at all when it comes to NET. I am wondering if I am really making any difference in the Relay for Life of Greater Fall River. I am wondering if I just walked away from all of this if it would make any significant difference.

I get up in the morning and I work on cancer. I have lunch, then I do some more work on cancer. Tonight, I will have dinner and work on cancer some more.

Virtually every day, I write something for this site. On a good day, there are 60 views of what is here. On a bad day, we never get out of single digits. And those single digit days have been increasing as the weather gets nicer. I keep working to build an audience–as do the other folks working behind the scenes–but that audience does not fully materialize.

Dana-Farber now has the Program in Neuroendocrine and Carcinoid Tumors. Jane’s death had something to do with that. But a $1.8 million donation over the next three years from an anonymous donor likely has more to do with that than anything I have done. Yes, we have launched the Walking with Jane Dybowski Fund for Neuroendocrine Cancer at Dana-Farber. But we have had little success in raising money through it.

Yes, last year we raised about $30,000 for NET research and another $4,500 for cancer research generally. But we will be hard pressed to match that total this year from what I have seen so far. While our Relay for Life team will likely beat last year’s efforts, the NET amount raised so far has begun to worry me. We just don’t seem to be getting any traction there–and I don’t know how to fix it, despite all the workshops I have been to and all the conversations I have had.

I’d like to say that my being chairman of the Greater Fall River Relay is the reason we are ahead of last year. It isn’t. The fact is, I am largely a figurehead. I run meetings, give the occasional speech. But the real work is done by the committees–and I have never seen any group work as well as this one does. The truth is, this was an event that was ready to take off before I ever crossed the threshold.

People believe otherwise. At Dana-Farber, I get introduced to the heavyweights as though I have done the unheard of. People well up the chain of command at ACS actually answer my emails. And I don’t understand any of it. I have done very little.

I won’t stop doing what I am doing. I may sometimes wonder if I am making a difference. But as someone once said to me, the outcome matters less than the attempt.