2025 Ride:
We will ride in loving memory of our wonderful mom, Amy, who passed away on January 31, 2024 after a long, courageous battle with Multiple Myeloma.
2023 Ride:
“Walk On” has been our family’s motto for decades, first coined when our mom was recovering from an aneurysm when she was just 24 years old. At that time, she was featured on the cover of Walking Magazine when they shared her story of how she walked herself back to health. A few years later, she once again walked on through multiple back operations. And for the last 10 years she has walked on while managing an uncommon blood cancer. Our mom has proven time and again that walking is a crucial form of therapy for overall health.
With the help of Dana Farber, our mom is able to continue to “walk on” after what was the most difficult hurdle in her 10 years of managing Multiple Myeloma. In August of last year, our mom’s incredible doctor recommended she try a brand-new treatment called CAR T cell therapy, which takes a few months to prepare for, so he got her a spot to have CAR T in January. Unbeknownst to us, this plan would ultimately save our mom’s life. On the day after Thanksgiving (46 days before she was supposed to receive the CAR T), we heard words you never want to hear. The cancer had begun to spread to her central nervous system, and there was little to nothing available to treat the disease after it migrates into this area. The spreading was causing her to lose feeling in her legs, hands and the side of her face and she was quickly losing her ability to walk. Her doctor immediately had her start very intense chemotherapy and radiation, with an inkling of hope, but neither worked. Her symptoms continued to worsen rapidly, leading to the paralysis of the lower half of her body. CAR T was our glimmer of hope, as we prayed for a miracle. CAR T had not yet been tried on a patient with Multiple Myeloma in the central nervous system before as it is an extremely rare situation (<1% chance), but her doctor speculated that CAR T could possibly give her a chance at recovery. After chemotherapy and radiation had failed to help, we felt like January could not come fast enough.
Shortly after our mom received the CAR T cell therapy, we watched as this miracle unfolded. Our mom went from being nearly paralyzed from the waist down to standing unassisted and slowly gaining the mobility and strength to walk again… In a matter of weeks, the cancer levels in her blood dropped to the lowest they have been in years and the cancer in her nervous system appeared to be gone! This brand-new treatment saved our mom's life.
So, we ride for Dana Farber to discover and approve more treatments like CAR T that can be a miracle for more families…
We ride in honor of our mom and her relentless battle with Multiple Myeloma…
We ride in honor of Heather, who beat advanced-stage Melanoma 11 years ago…
And we ride in memory of our Grammy (Mary Bristol) who, because of the Lymphoma treatments, went into remission three times in her life! With great sadness, we lost our Grammy this May, but are proud to say the cancer didn’t take her from us. She would have loved to cheer us on from the sidelines - like she always has!
100% of the funds we are raising will go to Dana Farber, with most of the funds being specifically directed to Dana Farber's Clinical Director of Hematologic Malignancies (i.e., Leukemia, Lymphoma, and Multiple Myeloma) to assist in their team's continued research. The same team of doctors and researchers that helped CAR T to be approved are on the verge of coming out with similar breakthrough treatments. These treatments, including CAR T, have proved to be incredibly successful across various types of cancer, beyond just blood cancers, including breast cancer and melanoma. Our hope is that these very breakthroughs bring us a giant step closer to a world without terminal cancer.
May all those bearing the badge of cancer continue to walk on, and on, and on.
