Last month, I learned that my brother-in-law David was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS for short). It’s a rare cancer made up of cells that normally develop into skeletal muscles, and, in David’s case, it has formed a huge growth on his lower leg.
David has an entrepreneurial spirit, having started up a clothing line called Decorate Our Home Planet (D.O.H.P) that specializes in shirts and jeans. For every item sold, David plants a minimum of 3 trees to help give back to our environment. David is also an inspiration to his Bay Area students where he’s been teaching grades 1-6 for nearly a decade.
Having been an athlete his whole life, David was involved in a car accident in college after which doctors told him he would never run again. David refused to believe that and worked extremely hard with his physical therapy and eventually would be able to run on an Anti-gravity treadmill. And, his recovery didn’t stop there… he eventually would sign up for the 5k at the 2014 San Francisco Marathon and run it with a time of 30:43 (a sub 10-minute mile pace)!
Sean & I remember David’s excitement after he finished the race – he was planning to train for a 10k; and, eventually, he too wanted to run a marathon! He was so incredibly excited to have been able to run once again.
Now, David is going to have to put his running & marathon dreams aside temporarily while he fights this battle against cancer.
When I found out about David’s diagnosis, I immediately talked to Sean and we decided we should run the world’s largest marathon, the TCS New York City Marathon, for David while raising money to support a cancer-fighting charitable foundation.
We researched all cancer-fighting charities working with the New York City Marathon. After narrowing it down, we spoke with David (and my sister Diane) about each of their missions, and we decided that the James Blake Foundation was a perfect fit for us. The James Blake Foundation supports early detection research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Diane really like that they work with Memorial Sloan because they do a lot of research with sarcomas.
David is a creative, funny, kind-hearted brother (and husband to my sister) and has been a part of my family for the last 8 ½ years. He endured his first chemo treatment a couple weeks ago and will need to be in the hospital for 3 – 5 days for each of his 17 treatments over the next 11.5 months.
Needless-to-say, chemotherapy treatment is a marathon and not a sprint. Please make a donation to the James Blake Foundation in support of our NYC Marathon run for David and send David a message of support that he is not alone in this fight.
You can donate and support David at https://www.crowdrise.com/runnylegs.
Thank you for your support!
