RUN this town

One in 16,000

This year there will be 16,000 new patients treated at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

My sister will be one of them. 

Just over a month ago, Blair had an aggressive tumor removed from her ovary. A few days after this initial shock, we were fortunate to learn that the cancer was caught early. A CT scan showed no signs that the cancer had spread, and we were told that Blair’s cancer can be treated through chemotherapy. This all means that Blair’s cancer is curable. But, although still difficult to grasp, I know it means a whole lot more.

Between sending in my application for the 2012 Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge in October and completing the Bar Harbor Marathon, I reflected on my last four years running for Dana-Farber. I knew that I wanted to set very ambitious goals to celebrate my fifth year with the team. This was already setting up to be a very personal and challenging experience; however, I didn’t imagine that I would ever be running in honor of my sister—or, that while I would be doing a long run, she would be at Dana-Farber for chemotherapy. As this reality begins to unfold, it is clear that the next four months will be very personal.

Blair wants me to express that the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team has been a source of inspiration for her. More importantly, thanks to the years of support and generous gifts you have made to my marathon fundraising, we know that she will receive the highest level of care during her treatment at Dana-Farber. As a new patient, Blair, along with thousands of other patients, is part of a research initiative to find the exact genetic mutations which resulted in her cancer. Doctors and researchers at Dana-Farber can study these tumor profiles, through a test called OncoMap, to see what mutations in the genes are triggering the cancer to grow and ultimately how to turn those mutations off.

The OncoMap test can give researchers at Dana-Farber a better understanding of the genetic makeup of each patient’s cancer at a speed that was never before possible. Through this test, researchers could find out in less than a week if Blair’s cancer qualifies her for an experimental drug in a clinical trial. In the past, it could have taken up to a year to determine if Blair, or any other 21-year-old diagnosed with ovarian cancer, were the right candidate for a clinical trial. It was with the help of Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge fundraising that OncoMap was able to be developed. Without your support in the past, this test would not have been made possible for Blair and the 16,000 other patients who will be treated at Dana-Farber this year.

As I had mentioned, for my fifth year as a Dana-Farber runner I wanted to have a few ambitious goals, such as raising more than $10,000 and breaking a 4-hour marathon. I have one more goal that I want to add: seeing my sister beat cancer. I truly hope you’ll join me and support these goals by making a gift to my marathon challenge fundraising this year. Please go to my personal page www.rundfmc.org/2012/erick and make a gift that means a lot to you—because I know how much it would mean to my entire family.

I want to end this email the same way I ended my thank-you letter last April, because I’ve quickly realized how true the sentiment really is:  

With the utmost appreciation for everything you do and all that you have made possible,

- Eric