(Editor’s note: As I do every year, I am making the following letter available to everyone raising money for NET cancer research, whether for our NETwalkers Alliance Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk team or for a regional event in your area to support some other NET cancer research group. In the latter case, you have my permission to make changes in it to get it to work for your purposes. You can also use it as a model for creating your own fundraising letter. I don’t ultimately care who finds an answer to NET cancer–so long as someone does and it happens sooner rather than later. And, of course, if you’d like to make a donation to my Walk, I won’t object to that either.)
The Letter
Dear friends,
You’d think over five years after Jane’s death I’d have come to terms with that event. Friday night, I bawled my eyes out for close to three hours before I crawled into bed. Saturday morning, I started screaming, “I want my life back” at the top of my lungs. It didn’t change anything, but I felt better afterward.
I like to think I can have my life back anytime I want it: I just have to turn my back on NET cancer, turn my back on all the patients and caregivers I’ve met—and all the doctors and researchers working to find a cure for the cancer that killed my wife. People tell me it is my work against this cancer that holds me back from getting over Jane’s death—that my insistence on being in daily contact with it and those who have it is what prolongs my grief. They may even be right.
I just have to turn my back on NET cancer…
But I can’t un-see the truth of Jane’s 30 years of struggle with sleepless nights and constant diarrhea, nor un-see her final days in that hospital room. I know what every patient suffers. I know intimately what their families will go through–and are going through.
Yes, we’ve made substantial progress in the last five years. We have new imaging systems that make the disease easier to see. We have new drugs and treatments that ease the symptoms and prolong patients’ lives. And we are doing the basic research that will help us understand how this cancer works and how we can attack it. But we still don’t have a cure.
I know what every patient suffers.
So, again this year, I will walk the length of the Boston Marathon route on September 25. Over the last five years, you’ve helped me raise nearly $70,000 that way—every nickel of which funds NET cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The teams I’ve captained have raised over $180,000 for that purpose—and you’ve played an important role in inspiring that.
I am asking for your help again this year. We have a donor who will match every donation you make by June 30, dollar-for-dollar, up to $7500. And if we get that entire amount, I won’t ask you for another penny until this time next year. If we don’t, I’ll have to write again this summer.
Every dollar makes a difference. Please donate today.
Pax et lux
Harry Proudfoot
P.S. If you’d like to join us September 25, whether for 5K, 10K, 13.1 miles, 26.2 miles–or as a Virtual Walker–you can sign up by clicking here. We want to recruit 115 Walkers this year–one for ever 1000 patients who are living with the disease in the US–and one dollar for every one of those patients. Help us #cureNETcancernow.
