Sometimes the battle against NET frustrates me so badly I want to quit.

Today is one of those days. It is the result of a week of grinding on things and feeling that for all I have read and thought about and written I am doing far too little good for the time spent.

Two days ago I wrote a post on NET research. Two people have read it. Yesterday, I wrote about the need to fund basic research. Three people read that–and no one reacted to it.

Ten days ago, the local paper ran a story on my Jimmy Fund Marathon Walk effort. There was a bump in visits to this site–and one person commented on the story on the newspaper’s site, but that was the total reaction to the piece.

Jane’s death was 19 months and 15 days ago. Every day it feels like another part of my soul is gone–eaten by the grief and my seeming inability to bring about any kind of real change. People are still diagnosed with NET as poorly as they were two years ago. We still have no way to cure the disease after its initial stage–nor anything on the drawing board that looks likely to do that.

The NET money puzzle is every bit as inadequate as it was two years ago–and while we have added a few dollars to the pie, it is still woefully inadequate–and my efforts have had very little–if anything–to do with any of it.

I have ideas, but not the resources to carry them out as I would like to. We  have an electronic storefront that few visit–and that no one has purchased anything from for months. I have a direct mail letter finished but find the idea of stuffing and addressing 500 envelopes overwhelming. The same goes for a letter looking for companies to sponsor the Marathon Walk t-shirt.

My to-do list grows every day but the results list is largely stagnant.

This is not, however, the sound of me giving up. I played hooky most of today in the hope a day away from the madness would improve my state of mind. It has, but I am still feeling pretty frustrated. Hopefully, another good night of sleep tonight will help.

But I begin to understand the frustration others who have been fighting this disease longer than I have feel. Gaining any kind of traction when most of the world has never heard of NET or CS seems nearly impossible.

Still, I am reminded of the motto of the Skunkworks–the lab that designed US planes for World War II: “The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer. And I am also reminded of President Kennedy’s statement about going to the moon: We do not do this because it is easy but because it is difficult.

So I will go back to work tomorrow. I’ll stuff envelopes and make lists and draft new appeals. I’ll keep trying. Doing nothing changes nothing. Change only happens when we work to bring it about.