48 hours from the finish line

I started working on this year’s Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk campaign the first week in February. In less than 48 hours I will cross the physical finish line for that event in Copley Square. But as I write this, the money finish line is still very much in doubt.

Make a difference. Make it now. 

Our team is about $6000 short of its $60,000 goal. I am about $2500 short of my personal $20,000 goal. I’ve written and mailed the letters, prepared and given the speeches, organized and worked at fundraisers. I’ve encouraged the members of our team and advised them with every tip and strategy I know. They’ve all worked hard, all asked everyone they know to help the cause.

Moving beyond the possible

And we still look likely to come up short. Part of me knows I’ve done everything humanly possible over an insanely difficult period in my personal life these past eight months. I’ve lost my father, a niece, a good friend–wrestled with a knee injury and multiple gum surgeries. Part of me knows I have done everything humanly possible in the 49 months since Jane’s diagnosis–and the 45 months and nine days since her death–to make a difference for those living with carcinoid/NETs.

Our team is about $6000 short of its $60,000 goal.

Part of me knows that the $54,000 we’ve raised so far is $54,000 more than we might otherwise have. Part of me would like to be satisfied with that.

Why that last bit of money matters

But carcinoid/NETs is not one of those major cancers which measures its resources in the billions of dollars. If we are lucky, this year we will have perhaps $7.5-10 million total to work with. But too much of that will come from drug companies to finance drug trials. And too little–perhaps $2 million–will go into the basic research we have to do to figure out how and why this bizarre form of cancer works the way it does.

Part of me knows I have done everything humanly possible…

The money we raise goes to fuel that basic research that neither the government nor the drug companies will pay for. It pays for the equipment, the lab space and the people who do that research. It is money we cannot do without. It is the money that plants the seed from which new and better therapies will grow.

The desperate need

And we desperately need those new therapies. There are 120,000 NET cancer patients in the US who know they have the disease. I read their stories every day. They talk about the diarrhea; they talk about not being able to eat without triggering painful bloating and gas that no drug touches; they talk about the insomnia, the low blood pressure, the trouble breathing. They talk about all the things I watched Jane wrestle with every day of the 21 years, three months and eight days of our marriage.

It is the money that plants the seed…

I watched it kill her–and I see it killing them–killing them by inches every day–destroying the quality of their lives and shrinking their access to the world. A week does not go by that I don’t hear another of them has died. And from personal experience, I know precisely what that death looked like. Most weeks, it’s more than one.

Making a difference

What will $6000 buy? I don’t know. I only know that every dollar counts when you are fighting carcinoid/NETs. I only know that every day counts. I only know that even a single dollar could be the difference between finding a cure and watching more people die the death Jane died.

I watched it kill her–and I see it killing them…

Make a difference. Make it now. Give to our team’s efforts against carcinoid/NETs.