I’ve signed up for my second year of running the Lymphoma & Leukemia Society’s Team in Training. Why? To raise money to cure cancer. To hang out with the friends I made last year. Because if I don’t sign up for these things, I start to grow as wide as I am tall. When I do sign up for these things I can eat ice cream and cake.
But before I blather on about me some more, a thing or two about LLS. Since it’s inception in 1949, it’s raised over $750 million to fight blood cancers. That’s a — what’s the scientific term? That’s an assload of money. What do they do with this money? Here’s a quick peak. And it’s made a difference. The easiest way to see this is to join TNT and notice the number of survivors actually training with groups. One gentleman who’ll be training with Brooklyn this summer spoke to us yesterday. He was diagnosed at the end of 2009. LESS THAN TWO YEARS AGO. He was headed for a painful future of bone-marrow transplants when his doctors told him about a study in its fourth year that had discovered that people with his specific type of cancer responded to chemo just as well as they did bone-marrow transplants. This past March he ran a half marathon. Now he’s training for New York.
Guess who funded the study? Go on. Guess. LLS. And people like you who helped me raise money last year.
Another stat they dropped on us. A kid diagnosed with blood cancer in the 1960s had a 4% chance of survival. A kid today has a 90% chance. But before we go patting ourselves on the back, I’ll tell you what the coordinator told us. As amazing as that is, imagine putting 10 parents in a room and telling one set of them that their child is going to die.
So that’s why we do this.
Up next? Will I run the Hampton Half Marathon or the Hampton Full Marathon?
KEN WHEATON 