A Thankful Anniversary

So there I was this morning, preparing to speak at a TNT recruitment meeting to form a corporate team for the Monument Avenue 10K next spring. I was finalizing in my mind what I wanted to say in my five minutes, speaking as a survivor, a TNT marathoner, and as a mentor. I looked at my watch, and noted the date: 11/25. I thought about this for a minute, did some quick calculations in my head, and it hit me: exactly six years ago, at the exact same time of day, I was sitting in an oncology room a few miles away getting my very last chemotherapy treatment!

It was the Monday before Thanksgiving in 2002 and I don't think I can adequately describe the excitement, thankfulness and joy that I felt as I headed into the chemo room that day, praying that my white cell count would be high enough to get the final dose and get it over with. Even though I knew by then exactly what the next 12 or so days would be like, I realized that very soon all of the misery that I'd had to cope with for the past six months would be coming to an end.

During my many chemotherapy sessions, I met many others with all types of cancer: leukemia, lymphoma, lung, colon, bladder, and breast to name a few. Many of them, maybe most, faced a much more difficult, desperate and in some cases deadly battle than I did. On that last day of treatment for me, the man in the chair next to me nearly died right there. Whatever type of cancer that he had was not responding, and so they tried a new treatment that day, fortunately in a greatly reduced dose. He went rigid, passed out, and peed all over the floor as the nurses frantically tried to revive him. When he came to, I remember the doctor telling him how there were not a whole lot of options for him since the new treatment that had just nearly killed him was the last available treatment. I wondered how overwhelming it would be to get that kind of message and felt really bad for him, and for his daughter, who had driven him in. I also felt even more thankful about finishing that saga in my life with the expectation of being in remission from lymphoma. After nearly 6 years in remission, I still feel as thankful.

If you read this and you are doing or have done Team in Training or something similar, I really believe that what all of you are doing means that future patients will have more effective, less horrible options available to them. You should all be proud of yourselves. As you give thanks for the many good things in your lives, know that many people down the line will be thankful for the assistance that you will be indirectly providing them. I don't know the names of people who funded and conducted research back in the 1970's and 1980's that led to effective treatments for Hodgkin lymphoma, but I guarantee you that I give thanks for them nearly every day. During my Alaskan, San Diego and Arizona marathons, they were with me every step of the way.

Happy Thanksgiving!