The walking man

I walk a great deal. Under normal circumstances, I walk 3-5 miles every day. In the summer, as I ramp up for the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk, that number climbs until I am doing 60-80 miles a week. After that 26.2 mile effort, I taper off for a few months. Winter arrives and I am reduced to walking an hour each day in a local mall.

Come walk with me.

Walking is good for me in two very different ways. The first is physical. Walking helps me build muscle and lose the flab that winter brings with it. But a walk is also a mental thing for me. It becomes a meditation–and the longer the walk, the deeper that meditation becomes.

Walk history

Jane and I tried to walk together every day when she was alive. We would hash over the day’s events or our plans for the next day. Sometimes we would try to decide what we needed to do about the dying lawn mower or what piece of the lawn we were going to turn into a new garden bed. Sometimes we just moved in companionable silence, holding hands.

I walk 3-5 miles every day.

But the habit of walking was there for me long before I met Jane and has endured long after her death like little else that we did together. Part of that has to do with the realization that walking was a good way to raise money and awareness for the cause of NET cancer–and for other issues I care about.

MS Walk

This weekend, I will head down the road to Dartmouth. They are doing a walk for MS research. A friend from my high school days lost a sister to it, and she is part of the reason I do it. But I also see it as an investment in other lives–as I do with all these walks.

Sometimes we just moved in companionable silence…

I have a friend whose mother has wrestled with the disease for many years. I’d like her to have more years with her grandchildren. I have another friend when fights the disease every day, herself. She has two still young children. I’d like her to see them graduate from high school. I’d like to see her hold her grandchildren in her arms. Jane’s cousin has a son with an aggressive form of the disease–but he was one of the lucky ones in a drug trial. He is not cured, but the pace of the disease has slowed.

Walking the walk

Later this month, I’ll walk with a former student and her team as she walks to raise awareness about her mother’s rare angiosarcoma. It is known even less well than NET cancer. She deserves to see her young grandson grow into adolescence and adulthood.

I’d like her to see them graduate…

Next month, I’ll travel to Chelmsford to walk against Cystic Fibrosis, a nasty bit of business I’ve seen several times in my life. I’ll remember the classmate who died when I was a high school freshman–a person I did not know at all, but who placed the name of the disease in my mind. More importantly, I’ll walk with my friends Nancy and Bruce and their 30-something daughter who had a lung transplant four years ago days before her CF would have killed her. And I’ll walk in hopes my friend Wendy’s daughter, now a teenager, will live in a world where a CF patient will have the same life expectancy and quality of life as anyone else.

Hunger Walk

Next month, too, I’ll do the Walk for Hunger in Boston. I’ll do it because I know what it is to be poor–to not know where your next meal is coming from or what it will be. My sophomore year of college, I learned how ketchup and hot water can be used to make your stomach think you’ve had real food. And then things really got bad.

I’ll remember the classmate who died…

I’ve known too many people who have spent time homeless, too many people who have had to rely on soup kitchens and food pantries, too many people who’ve gone to bed hungry so their children can go to bed a little less hungry. Every mile I walk, every dollar I raise, makes an immediate difference in someone’s life that day.

Relay for Life

In late June, I’ll walk through the night at the Relay for Life of Greater Fall River to raise money for general cancer research and patient support programs. The American Cancer Society only spends 20 percent of its income on cancer research, but what they do with the majority of their money is every bit as important to cancer patients.

And then things really got bad.

A great treatment is of no use if you can’t get to where it is offered, is of no use if you have no place to stay when you get there. And cancer treatments can be both physically and mentally debilitating, as well as financially crushing. Road to Recovery provides rides to treatments; Hope Lodges provide patients and their families a place to stay during treatment; Look Good, Feel Better provides wigs, make-up lessons, and prosthetics; there is even a program that helps patients find ways to pay for treatments.

Marathon Walk

But my biggest commitment comes in late September with the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk. Most of the money people raise in that event goes into a general fund for research and patient support.

…cancer treatments can be both physically and mentally debilitating…

But teams like our NETwalkers Alliance raise enough money to determine where that money is spent. Every dime our team raises is earmarked for NET cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Program in Neuroendocrine and Carcinoid Tumors.

Walk for the living

NET cancer killed Jane, but I don’t walk for her. She’d never forgive me if I did. Rather, I walk to help the 112,000 diagnosed patients in the US for whom we have no cure;  I walk so people like my friend Jillian will see her boys into adulthood and hold her grandchildren in her arms; I walk so people like my friend Alicia will have years to spend with her husband; I walk so people like my friend Pam can celebrate her daughter’s achievements; I walk so people like my friend Beth can have the life with her husband that Jane and I didn’t get to have.

…my biggest commitment comes in late September…

And I walk so the caregivers and families of those 112,000 diagnosed patients don’t face so young the grief of losing a parent, like my friend Jenaleigh has; face the grief of losing a brother or sister, like my friends Elizabeth has; face the loss of a child, like my father-in-law has; face the loss of their beloved, like my friend Robert and I have.

Time to walk

I walk every day. I hope every step I take helps someone, just as I hope every word I write–every action I take–makes a positive difference in someone else’s life.

NET cancer killed Jane…

You can help make that difference. Come walk with me.