The weekend of August 1-2, 2009, I will participate in the 30th Annual Pan Mass Challenge, bicycling 192 miles across Massachusetts to benefit the Dana Farber Cancer Institute's Jimmy Fund. Your generous contribution will help sponsor my ride, and will allow Dana Farber to continue its cutting-edge research and treatment in its race for a cure. I aim to raise $6,000, which represents a dollar for every other biker who rides with me. With 12 million new cancer cases worldwide, as I ride I will be carrying the vision of one cancer sufferer for every inch of the 192-mile route, with the understanding that over half succumb to the disease. This fatality rate is steadily decreasing for those for whom advanced treatment is available, and progress must continue. [Please press the READ MORE button to the right...]
By making a contribution (by pressing the DONATE button), you can join my paceline, with your animated image appearing in tandem on the bicycle below. Teams of bikers form a "paceline" to help each other out, taking turns to lead the pack and set the pace while others can draft behind with less wind to battle. The Pan Mass Challenge is essentially one big paceline, in which those who are able to help others who struggle with cancer, take the lead and do so. Every little bit might make it a little easier for the battle they must face every day -- a battle many of us are likely to face.
The Pan Mass Challenge is the nation's oldest fundraising bike-a-thon, and its most successful single charitable athletic event. This massive and awe-inspiring event is run entirely by volunteers backed by corporate contributions, allowing every dollar donated in support of riders to go to the Jimmy Fund for life-saving cancer care and research. For its part, The Dana Farber Cancer Institute is one of the world's top cancer research and treatment centers, receiving near-perfect scores from the National Institutes of Health in the quality and efficiency of its research. DFCI President Dr. Edward Benz says of their progress: "Dana-Farber investigators have recently discovered an array of genes linked to lung cancer and pinpointed a protein that triggers the self-destruct mechanism of cancer cells. They have identified a protein 'biomarker' that indicates the presence of a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer, and are showing how tumors' genetic 'signatures' can guide therapy for individual patients." In addition to its many advances in cancer treatment in its race towards a cure, Dana Farber's research is yielding unsolicited dividends in many other areas as well, such as a possible lifetime vaccine against influenza, which kills about a quarter million people worldwide each year. The researchers at Dana Farber are at the very top of their field, and deserve our generous support. Dr. Benz said: "When they write the history of how cancer was conquered, the Pan Mass Challenge will be in Chapter 1."
I ride the Pan Mass Challenge in memory of my brother-in-law, Bryce McHale, whose picture is at the top of this page. Bryce was an altogether decent man: smart, gentle, kind, and with a quiet but rather wicked sense of humor. A chemist, he built up a successful environmental testing firm in suburban Detroit that he ultimately willed to his employees. When Ellen and I learned of his diagnosis of colon cancer, I wondered what I could do to offer some inspiration during his struggle with the disease. I recalled one day many years earlier, bicycling out on Cape Cod and encountering countless other riders on their long trek out to Provincetown, having already rode 150 miles, all cheerfully working their hardest with the single purpose to battle cancer, a phenomenal, uplifting sight. That's when I first learned of the Pan Mass Challenge, and that's when I decided that one day I would participate. Unfortunately, when I did ride in 2005, it was a week after Bryce died from surgical complications. Another week after that, we attended his memorial. His death came just a few days shy of his 41st birthday.
Honoring Bryce was the impetus for why I started riding, but to go on riding from one year to the next, there must be something more: a reason. It's clear that during Bryce's struggle with cancer, there were three critical junctures that might have led to a better outcome. Of those, two failed due to fairly marginal limitations in the available set of diagnostic tools. Because of a false negative on his colonoscopy, his cancer was not detected early enough. And later, during a long period after his initial surgery followed by chemo, doctors were simply unable to distinguish the reappearance of cancer from what seemed to be a recurring low-level infection. It was quite a shock for members of his family to realize that, despite the availability of expert specialists and advanced medical centers, there could be such wide gaps in our more mundane treatment options. Even after slowly growing accustomed to Bryce's absence, I find this situation intolerable.
Cancer is not a single disease, and I have no illusions it's likely to yield to the kind of sudden breakthrough that we can point to as a "cure." Still, we are now making such tremendous strides at hitting it from all angles that many forms of cancer are no longer considered a death sentence. If there is to be a cure, I'm certain Dana Farber will be essential to its discovery, but that's actually not my focus. Research will be worthwhile even if it keeps providing a slightly better set of everyday tools, so that from one case to the next, in each situation where there is the sort of critical juncture that Bryce faced, the outcome might be tipped in the other direction. Perhaps others may avoid Bryce's ordeal.
For more information on why I ride, I posted a video, here: http://tinyurl.com/lzybns
If you can contribute to my ride, press the "DONATE" button below, and you have the option to make your name appear as part of the paceline, and to have your own page to show your support. All contributions are tax-deductible. And if you contribute, please let me know if you do not want to later be publicly acknowledged for your help.
Thank you for your generosity,
Michael Sierra Concord, MA