In the summer of 2007 I found myself somewhere I'd hoped never to see again - the waiting room at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. I'd spent time there before, back in 1986 when my mother Fran was diagnosed with Stage IV Large-B Lymphoma. The cancer had spread rapidly throughout her body, invading several major organs. The prognosis was just short of terminal. But after months of the most advanced treatment then available - aggressive chemotherapy that out of necessity killed good cells along with the bad, utterly ravaging her body but never her spirit or her will to live - my mother and the doctors at Dana-Farber had defied the odds and beaten her cancer into submission.
Twenty-one years later, it returned. Though now transformed into Small-B Lymphoma, the cancer was no less invasive the second time around. Once again, it had spread throughout her body. Once again, it had sapped every ounce of her usually boundless energy, filling her lungs with so much fluid that every breath was followed by wracking spasms of cough. Once again, sitting in that waiting room on that first day, we prepared ourselves for the worst.
This time, though, something was different. In the time since her last battle, research had produced a new weapon that was almost beyond imagination just two decades earlier: Rituxamib, a drug that identifies and eradicates B-cells while leaving other cells largely untouched. It's been said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic; and while the treatment was by no means easy or without risk, watching my mother's cancer melt away under the care of her oncologist at Dana-Farber seemed to me nothing short of magic.
My mother has been the single most important influence in my life, and I simply could not imagine the last twenty years without her. Dana Farber - the doctors and staff who have cared for her there, the research they do there - has given me the gift of those two decades and all the years ahead. That is a debt I can never repay. To ride a few hundred miles (we're starting a day early to ride from the New York border to Sturbridge -- it is, after all "Pan Mass") and raise a few thousand dollars toward Dana-Farber's mission so that others can have a chance at that same gift pales in comparison to what I have received. But it's a start.
This year, my second riding the PMC, is particularly special. My team this year, the "Stem Cell Cyclists" will be directing that the funds we raise be directed to support the research of Dr. Corey Cutler, my mother's oncologist. In addition to his work as a clinician in Dana-Farber’s Hematologic Oncology Center and as an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Cutler specializes in bone marrow transplantation, an aggressive therapy for leukemia and lymphoma that, despite tremendous advances over the past two decades, remains one of the riskiest procedures in modern medicine. Dr. Cutler’s research team is developing a novel immunosuppressant to address graft-versus-host disease (aka transplant rejection), a devastating complication that affects 35-50% of bone marrow transplant patients. Dr. Cutler’s group has produced successful results from preliminary trials and has now embarked on a national trial which will enroll over three hundred transplant patients across the country.
Cancer research is enormously expensive; the bill for just one recent study in Dr. Cutler’s program came to almost $40,000. In the face of staggering costs it’s difficult to imagine what good one small contribution can do. But that’s the magic and the power of the Pan-Mass Challenge. By harnessing the efforts of more than 5,000 riders and volunteers, all of our small efforts together have an enormous impact.
