Dear Friends and Family,

After a great ski season where I left part of my left knee on the mountains and having just finished partial knee replacement surgery in mid-May, I am feeling very grateful to be able to write to you all and express my desire to ride in my 8th Pan Mass Challenge the first weekend of August 2024. The knee is doing quite well, and I hope to start riding my bike later this week to begin training.

This year’s ride is dedicated to my cousin Pat Everett who has been fighting Meselphemionia this past year. He is an incredible person with a great story as a cancer survivor having had Hodgkin’s disease when he was a boy and treated in those days with radiation therapy. It saved his life but now in his 70’s, cancer is back. He is almost through the chemotherapy after having some heart complications at the start of the process and our whole family is very hopeful for remission and more years of boating, fine finish carpentry, enjoying friends and family. Go PAT!

With my great supporters, we have been directing part of our raise to brain tumor survivor, Dmitri Itzovitz (donated 1/3rd of our total donation to the “Dmitri Fund” for children with brain cancer via Dana Farber for the past seven years). Dmitri is 21 now, a musician, soccer player and going to college. Dmitri’s dad Danial (a great PMC rider) sent out a note on his son’s challenges. Below is part of his letter and after reading you will know why we are all supporting Dana Farber via the PMC:

Dear Friends and Teammates (present and past!),

I’m writing with some truly good news about what our fundraising and donations have achieved.

Since 2015, we’ve raised $3.6 million for Dmitri’s Pediatric Brain Tumor Research Fund, which in part helped to fund the TAK580 clinical trial. The trial was extremely successful: it shrunk the brain tumors of kids we know and love. But academic trials are small, and their direct impact is limited. Many drugs that go through academic trials—even successful ones—never reach a broader population.

We now have a breakthrough. TAK580, now called Ojemda, has received FDA approval: it’s the first ever FDA-approved therapy developed to target the most common pediatric brain tumor—Dmitri’s kind of tumor.

It’s hard to convey the significance of this development. When Dmitri was nine and starting treatment in 2012, his neuro-oncologist told us Dmitri would be infused every week with the same toxic and grueling chemotherapies they’d used on kids with brain tumors for decades.

We were stunned. Despite the many developments in cancer research and the treatment landscape since the 1970s, none of this applied to kids’ brain tumors. Few academic researchers and no biotech companies were taking this on in a meaningful way.

I got involved with the PMC because I felt helpless when Dmitri was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I hoped that maybe I could help raise enough money that it could somehow make a difference. I’m so moved that together we actually did help to change this bleak situation. Along with four other driven PMC teams who support kids brain tumor research, we helped to build Dana Farber’s now-thriving pediatric brain tumor research program. With our support, top researchers joined the cause, prioritizing work that would be most likely to help sick kids as soon as possible. Clinical trials for TAK580 and other compounds were a direct result.

We will continue, with your help, to support Dr. Cigall Kadoch, and her group of resolute biologists in their fight to discover the root cause of the most difficult cancers. See: https://www.dana-farber.org/find-a-doctor/cigall-kadoch/.

I’m also very happy to report that our family dog, Zermatt is in her second year of cancer treatment and doing very well with great enthusiasm for play and food! It is quite interesting to see how human cancer treatments are being well used in the Pet World. Very similar drugs and treatment prodocols.

Your generosity has made a difference, and it inspires me to keep going. I need to ask for your help again: Donate if you can and no worries if not.

Let us all pray for those with Cancer, those that support them and those that are working to fight it. You are all a big reason for my efforts, and I appreciate each of you.

Please go on line at https://donate.pmc.org/ then type Richard OMeara into the “find a rider box” and it is easy from there or drop me a check made out to PAN Mass Challenge. I will deposit the checks to PMC weekly. My Rider number is RO 0055.

Richard O’Meara

10 Amazon Dr.

Portsmouth, RI 02871

Sincerely,

Rich O

Rich O’Meara’s Cancer Honor Roll

Mrs. Hannan

Marjorie Hawes

Cindy Sullivan

Ken Cummings

Peg Brown

Catherine Cummings

Phyllis O’Meara

Bill O’Meara

Toddy Everett

Hunter Hall

Dianne Herbst

Kathy Everett

Jean Everett

Bob Everett

Reiko Wilson

Harry Horvitz

Lois Horvitz

Nadia VanCamp

Melissa McManus

Lindy Gay Lewandowski

Barbara Prichard

Ann Danhauer

Pam Pingeton

Steve Fish

Peter McCourt

Heidi Fish

Steve Fish

Joseph (Bean) Cunningham

Pam Siguler

And too many more!

Survivors!!

Cathy O’Sullivan

Peter VanLancker

Erin Cummings

Pat Everett

Mary Everett Wasko

Carole Everett

Jim Farley

Carolyn Mullenary

Pam Schneider

Usman Ismail

Zermatt the family dog!