This year marks my 16th year riding in the 192-mile Pan-Mass Challenge bike ride. Every year, the PMC sets a minimum amount of money to be fundraised by each rider. This year, the amount set by the PMC is $6,000. I am setting a personal goal of $16,000, as this is my 16th year riding in memory of my mom, who lost her battle to cancer in 2007.
The reason I ride is to try to reduce the number of lives lost to this disease, and to try to increase opportunities for doctors to find treatments and possibly even a cure. If you received the letter I wrote last year, you might remember that the father of a close friend of mine was diagnosed with the same type of cancer my mom had, Multiple Myeloma. After several months of fighting and being treated at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, and what seemed like a very promising prognosis, he ultimately passed away this spring. Cancer is a strange phenomenon though, and although it causes people to get sick, and sometimes pass away, there are many things cancer cannot do. The poem below illustrates the empowering nature of the PMC, as every rider, whether a cancer survivor themself, or a loved one to someone who has lost their battle to the disease, is channeling their energy into a positive and constructive outlet:
What Cancer Cannot Do
Cancer is so limited...
It cannot cripple love.
It cannot shatter hope.
It cannot corrode faith.
It cannot eat away peace.
It cannot destroy confidence.
It cannot kill friendship.
It cannot shut out memories.
It cannot silence courage.
As you are reading this, you may be thinking that 192 miles is a long distance to ride a bike. 192 miles is a very short distance in comparison to the number of hours patients have to meet with doctors, the number of treatments patients have to receive, the number of surgeries they have to undergo, the amount of medications they have to take, the side effects they experience, and the number of days they may just not feel themselves. This event puts so many things into perspective for me, and that’s what keeps me riding.
