I wonder, sometimes, if what I am doing here does any good. I wonder if my time would be better spent doing something else.

Then I get a note from someone who says something along the lines of, “Thank you. I finally know what is wrong with me.” Or I see a post on Facebook that links to something here and asks people to share it because “awareness matters.” Or someone comes up to me at a conference and says, “thanks for what you are doing with the website. You don’t know how much it matters.” Or I get a note asking me if someone can use a particular post in a different venue.

Those things don’t happen often, as a general rule. But they seem to happen in clusters just about the time I most need them to happen–and that has been the case the last few days.

The Greater Fall River Relay for Life is next Friday. I’ll be on a local radio program (WSAR–1480) sometime after 8 a.m. Monday to promote that event. Other planning committee members will be on the same show later in the week at various times to tell their stories and help build us toward the weekend. We have over 1,250 participants signed up as team members–so many that we had to push delivery of the official T-shirts back to the night before the event. We still have room for a few more teams and as many people as we can cram onto the track at Somerset Berkley Regional High School.

And we are hoping that by the time all is said and done, we will have raised more than $350,000 for the American Cancer Society by the time we fold up the tents at 10:30 a.m. Saturday.

Yesterday I did the launch for my Jimmy Fund Marathon Walk Campaign. I signed up back in March but have done little to promote that effort as we focused all our energies on the Relay. In addition to my own walk, I am trying to recruit others to walk with our Caring for Carcinoid Foundation team. The money that group raises all goes into NET/CS research in Dana-Farber’s Program in Neuroendocrine and Carcinoid Tumors. Details about the different lengths people can do and how to sign up are available on the Marathon Walk site.

I also tried to launch the Three Million March this week. A couple of people have signed on to help with that. That, too, will have to get more work done after Relay ends, but if you can help, please do. We need people to know this disease exists, that it is deadly, and that it may be much more widespread than many think. This may yet prove to be something very different from a pink zebra–or even a plain zebra.

Even a link on your Facebook page can have a greater impact than you know.