So, if you can't really walk or run yourself, what might you do on a Saturday morning? Well, I called Coach Chuck, marathon coach of the fall Team in Training team, and asked him if he would like me to do a water stop or two, and a mission moment. The answer was yes, and so I was at the boat lake at Byrd Park at 6:30 AM. I got to catch up with several friends I hadn't seen in a while, including fellow survivors Nicki and Mindy. It was a nice looking crew they got training for various fall events, including Dublin (green being an appropriate color for Ireland and jealousy!)
I told the team about my friend Linda. She has been dealing with three kinds of cancer since she was 29, multiple times. She is now 62. When she had A.L.L. 33 years ago, survival rates were nil, but with experimental drugs, Linda survived. It was a terrible ordeal. Her uncle watched her daughter for 11 months, and her boss kept her job open and paid her mortgage. Into her 30's, she relapsed and went through it all again. Then in her 40's, the chemo she got for the ALL caused non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and later, breast cancer. She has had multiple occurrences of both of these, and a lot of suffering. In a note to me this week, Linda told me that she feels totally defeated and is just hoping to see her 63rd birthday in August. She said "tell the team to keep moving for people like me who can't."
Linda has endured tremendous suffering over the last three decades and this continues. It is past time to find cures that work, first time, every time, and without causing other cancers and such intense suffering.
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