We are making a difference.
That’s what they told us at Dana-Farber last Friday. I keep looking at the small amount we raised last year compared to what others could do–and in some cases did do. And I keep wondering how what we have done could mean that much.
But it does. And the reason it does is a little thing called leverage. As a philosopher in ancient Greece once said, “Give me a lever and a place to put a fulcrum, and I can move the world.”
The money we raised last year created a place to put the fulcrum. It seems a little thing, but that money made other money possible. It set some things in motion that in the long term will change the situation for patients with NET. In the long term, it may save lives.
But I have to admit I am greedy. I want the long term to move as quickly as possible into the short term. Sometimes I think people think I am kidding when I say I want this cancer dead–that I am engaging in hyperbole. I’m not. I want this cancer to be like smallpox–a story to scare small children with about the bad old days like the bogeyman. And I want it to happen sooner rather than later.
I want it to happen sooner rather than later because I begin to suspect that my speculations about this cancer are correct: that it is the man behind the curtain–the reason that many cancers are more aggressive than they might be. I’ve been thinking about those feeder cells that allow the carcinoid cells to grow–and I wonder if those feeder cells create an environment that makes other cancers grow more rapidly as well.
And if that is true, then unraveling NET may be one of the key moves in taming those other aggressive cancers.
Yes, we have a place to put the fulcrum, but we still need to buy the fulcrum and the lever and figure out which way things need to move. And all of those items have scary price tags.
We can’t afford to be done yet because the cure is still out there waiting for us. We are doing the basic research that will get us there–but we are not there yet.
Jane’s mantra in the hospital haunts me every day: “We have to keep going forward.”
There are 38 days between us and Relay. There are just under four months to the Marathon Walk. There are just under six months to NET Awareness Day. Each of those event is important–but the days in between are even more important. Every day, I want at least one more person to hear about NET. Every day, I want to find one more donor, one more way to find the funds we will need to win this fight.
Together, we can make those things happen. Jane would like that.
