Our Team's February Miracle Girls

This was my third note to donors. You can go here to see some photos of our February Miracle Girls!

A couple of weeks have gone by since my last update, and we finally got enough of a break from the snow to start training. I want to thank everyone who has donated to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society through my Cancer Kickin’ Campaign. So far, 36 people have donated $1,805 to my cause, and I very much appreciate your generosity. If you would like to make a donation, see my list of honorees, or catch up with what is going on with my campaign, you can do so at my Team in Training web page:

http://pages.teamintraining.org/va/rnrseatl10/art_ritter

Well, the snow finally held off long enough for our summer team to meet in very un-summer like weather this past Saturday. It was cold and icy, but it felt great to get in our first training at long last, and to run and walk five miles. But the main subject of this note is Team Richmond’s February Miracle Girls, Emma and Nicki.

Everyone on our team is charmed by Emma, whom I first met in 2005 when she was just five years old. If you are not inspired and touched by Emma’s story, please check your pulse, and quickly! Imagine that your ten week old baby seems very ill and you take her to the emergency room. After some tests, a doctor appears, crying. He tells you that your precious little girl has infant acute lymphoblastic leukemia. This was the experience of my friend Holly and her family with their newborn daughter / sister. They all said goodbye to Emma that weekend over ten years ago, sure that she would not survive the weekend. But thanks to cancer research, there was indeed hope, and after more tests, it was determined that Emma had a 50% chance of surviving the A.L.L. – up just recently from just 25% - if she could survive the chemo. All of Emma’s first major holidays and her first birthday were spent in the hospital. I still tear up when I see the picture of this little baby, so obviously in misery with her body all swollen, hooked up to all kinds of needles and tubes. And I always get a happy tear when I see the photo of Emma celebrating after finishing her first triathlon a few years back, for survive she did! Valentine's Day this year marked nine years in remission for this wonderful ten year old who loves all kinds of animals, but especially lions, tigers, cats, dogs, jaguars, cheetahs, rabbits, fish, turtles, leopards and elephants. To survive, she and her family went through hell, and the long term effects of this kind of treatment on children can be very severe. That is another reason we do Team in Training – not just for cures, but for cures that don’t nearly kill the patient.

Visualize being handed a bag. Inside the bag are 100 marbles – 95 white and 5 red. You are told to reach in and to remove a marble from the bag. If it is red, you will live; if it is white, you will die. That is essentially the predicament of my friend Nicki, a young woman in college, 13 years ago in late February. All her treatments had failed, and Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma was going to kill her, unless a bone marrow transplant could somehow save her life. At that point, she had a five percent chance of survival as she received total body radiation and chemo to kill all her marrow. The replacement marrow was coming from South Carolina. Had the donor changed her mind or gotten sick, or had something happened to the marrow in transit, Nicki had a 0 percent chance of survival because her own marrow had been destroyed prior to the transplant. So there was no going back – the bridge had been burned. Amazingly, Nicki did not only survive, but has also run a number of marathons and half marathons for Team in Training since then. And on thirteenth anniversary (plus a day) of her life saving bone marrow transplant, she will be running the Mardi Gras half-marathon in New Orleans next weekend to celebrate the people who helped to save her life. These include her donor, doctors, nurses, medical researchers – and the people who donated to money to cure cancer.

Our team gets constant inspiration from our February Miracle Girls! Want to help save the life of a future Nicki or Emma? You can do so with a donation to LLS if you have not already done so, for each donation of any amount adds up. When combined with all of the other donations, your donation accomplishes truly great things.

Thanks for your support of this cause – to complete the development of effective cures for blood cancers, and ultimately, all cancers!
Art

Summer Team, Un-Summer Weather

Finally today, much of our Summer Team trained together for the first time! Summer weather occurred somewhere else, but not where we were. The seemingly ever-present wind coming off Swan Lake at Byrd Park chilled us thoroughly by the time we started training. The wind chill had to be in the single digits, even though the actual air temperature was probably in the high 20’s. The sidewalk was covered in sheer ice, and many of the sidewalks and streets we ran on were icy or snow covered in patches. From time to time, strong snow flurries would break out.

We were missing about a half dozen members of our team, but those that came were a spirited group. Coach Chuck gave us a mission moment about a little boy he knows, ill with leukemia. The child’s birthday is less than three weeks away, and he is not expected to make it. Totally sad, and why we do this, so future children and adults can have cures, not face untimely and horrible deaths.

I just realized as I write this that Coach Chuck didn’t lead us in a cheer, which has to be a first for him, because usually he has great team cheers. We did a brief warm-up, then started running and walking for our three to five mile routes through Virginia Commonwealth University and as far as the start of the downtown. I was pleased to learn that my prior walk coach and teammate Lelia is also doing a run / walk training, and so we ran and walked together. It was fun to train with her again! I did five miles and Lelia four, and she was kind enough to wait for me to do the extra mile so we could do the final two miles together on this out and back route.

Here are a few photos from the day:

Summer team at our first training on a wintery day. From left, Coach Chuck, Coach Betty, Ann Marie, Lauren, Art, Coach Walter, Lelia, Nancy, Stephie, Gus

Here is where we normally do our pre-run warm-up, but not today!

This is the memorial to the victims of the Holocaust at The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart near VCU. It never fails to move me, to think of the unimaginable suffering and loss.

The inscription that goes with the memorial.

Yours truly near the end of my five mile outing. Given my lack of running lately, I felt pretty good.

The Nashville Girl with Leukemia

This is my second fundraising note for my 2010 campaign.

Hello Again,

I wanted to reach out with an update and a message about a little girl I saw last April in Nashville that really touched my heart.

First, I want to thank everyone who has donated to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society through my Cancer Kickin’ Campaign. So far, 19 people have donated $1,000 to this cause. I very much appreciate your generosity. If you would like to make a donation, catch up with what is going on with my campaign, or see my list of race honorees, you can do so at my Team in Training web page:

http://pages.teamintraining.org/va/rnrseatl10/art_ritter

As far as other updates, the heavy snowfall we got over the weekend cancelled out our first training. So for now, I am getting in a little exercise when I can, but it might be a day or two before I can run outside again. Although based on the weather forecast we may not get to train this coming Saturday, either. And I am still waiting for Dallas fans to "cowboy up" with a donation of $100 or more to make me wear the cap with the star! Oh, the humiliation! But so far, no takers - well, a Seahawk fan and one other, but no Dallas fans. Hmmm, maybe the Cowboys aren't really "America's Team" after all!

I had a brief magical moment when I was in Nashville for the half-marathon last April, the kind of instant that makes you want to smile and cry all at the same time. I had decided to take a walk from the hotel to the Cumberland River the afternoon our team arrived. I was wearing a Team in Training shirt. As I walked by the convention center, two young women and two young girls passed me walking the other way. The girls were about six to eight, I would guess. I barely noticed any of them, given that I didn’t see them until I rounded the corner. But then I heard one of the women speak to one of the girls: “Look! There’s one of the Leukemia Society people!”. I turned my head and looked back at them. She was talking to one of the little girls, who happened to be bald with just a hint of hair growing back. And in an instant it hit me – “My God! This young girl has leukemia!” I smiled at her and waved, and she gave me a shy, sweet smile back. Then we went on our separate ways.

For a second I thought that I would go back and chat with them, tell them that I am a survivor and that she will be, too. But I felt like I might be intruding, and decided to keep on going. As I walked along, choking back tears for a short time, I thought of her. I thought about her as I sat by the river a little later. I thought of her during the Inspiration Dinner the next night, and again during the race the day after that. And of course since then, which is why I am writing this now. I know I will wonder about her for a long time. Will she ultimately survive? Will she graduate from high school and college? Fall in love? Get married? Have her own children and maybe grandchildren someday? Maybe do a marathon herself with Team in Training for LLS? Discover a cure for cancer someday or invent something that helps the world?

And I thought “This is why I do this.” Why I wake up at 4AM and 4:30AM to run and walk miles alone in the dark before work. Why I get up so early to run on Saturday mornings when sleeping in and then relaxing with a cup of tea might sometimes be easier. Why I train so long at times that I have to soak in a tub of ice water from the waist down. Why I am willing to run and walk 13.1 miles two days later in the heat, and 26.2 miles three times before. Why blisters and blackened and lost toenails are tolerable. Why I am willing to ask people for donations for this cause, even though it is always difficult to ask people to donate money. And it is why my teammates, thousands of them at any given time around North America, 650 of us in Nashville that weekend alone, do all of these things, too.

It is so this young girl, and others like her, can have a future. Nearly eight years ago, I received the gift of life when I survived a form of blood cancer that was treatable only because of much medical research and clinical trials. So to do what I can to help others have this same chance now and in the future feels like the right thing to do.

Whoever you are, young Nashville girl with leukemia, I hope you survive. I hope you have a long, productive, healthy, and happy life! And I am glad that our lives crossed for that brief, bittersweet instant last April.

Thanks for your support of this cause – to finish the job of finding effective cures for blood cancers.
Art

Rumors About Art and Team in Training

Hello Everyone!

Eight years ago this spring from surviving lymphoma, I am racing for a cure once again for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I am asking you to consider supporting my 2010 Cancer Kickin' Campaign by making a donation to the mission of curing blood cancers.

I guess there are always going to be rumors going around – that is just human nature – and recently, there have been some pretty interesting ones circulating that I want to take a moment to dispel.

Rumor # 1: “Did you hear that Art has permanently retired from doing Team in Training?” This is totally false! In fact, I am back with the TNT Summer Team, training for the Seattle half-marathon and fundraising for a cure for blood cancers. I would very much appreciate your support of this great cause. You can make a secure donation here:

http://pages.teamintraining.org/va/rnrseatl10/art_ritter

I think this rumor got started when people confused me with Green Bay Packers, er New York Jets, er Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre and all the times that he retired forever. I can understand why there was this confusion, of course. We are both manly men. We are both ruggedly handsome. We are both incredible athletes. We are both so famous we can’t go anywhere in public without being harassed by fans. We both wear purple uniforms when we compete. We are both getting a little old for doing this kind of thing. We are both fabulously wealthy. Okay, only one of us is fabulously wealthy. And yeah, maybe one or two of those other things was slightly exaggerated. But here is one thing about both Brett Favre and me that is true: we have both been affected by cancer; Favre through his wife; me, personally, and through my sister, sister-in-law, brother, and many other family members and friends. So, yes, I am indeed back out for another cancer kicking campaign, and would love for you to join me with a donation.

Rumor # 2: “Did you hear that cancer is cured now? So why is Art doing this again?” Cancer is most decidedly not cured. Every ten minutes, someone dies in this country from one of the blood cancers. In the five minutes that it takes you to read this note (and forward it to five friends if you wish), another American is diagnosed with a blood cancer. And that is from just one type of cancer. But your donation can get us just a bit closer to a cure.

Rumor # 3: “Did you know that Art is 85 years old? Isn’t that, like, too old to run a half-marathon?” I am 58, not 85. I can see where the confusion came in. I have said that the number of this TNT event for me (number five) and my years this spring since surviving cancer (eight) match my age. People just reversed the numbers, 8 and 5 instead of 5 and 8. I am putting the five and the eight in 58 this spring with this race! I have to say, there are times after training that I feel 85, though. It gets a little tougher each year, and I must seem like an old man to many of my young teammates. So make a donation to support this “ole man’s” cause while I can still do it!

Rumor # 4: “Cancer survivors too weak to do a marathon!” Some may be, but not this one, and not many others that I know. One reason I do this is to make a statement that cancer survivors are able to fully recover and be physically strong again. Maybe that will give someone else currently dealing with cancer some hope.

Rumor # 5: “Did you know that Art is a huge Dallas Cowboys fan? He even wears a Cowboys hat while training!” Not so! Cut my hand and I bleed Philadelphia Eagles green. Eagles fans are typically not Cowboys fans, believe me, and especially not this year when they totally humiliated us two weeks in a row. But here is a special offer that expires midnight on Super Bowl Sunday: if you are a Cowboys fan, make me a $100 donation and I will wear a Cowboys cap (that you provide) for a week at work. I’ll even expand the offer to wear the cap of any other team for a $50 donation! Dallas fans, “cowboy up” with that donation and make my humiliation complete!

I am excited to be out there with Team in Training again, trying to make a difference in the world. I greatly appreciate your support, because while I can run the race myself, I cannot race for a cure without the support of lots and lots of people.

Thank you,
Art Ritter