The treatment is as bad as the cure

Yesterday we had a fun event called the Ride & Tie. Teams of two share a mountain bike and switch off running and riding. It's a race to finish three loops around a 2 mile course -- except those of us taking on the Wildflower Long Course: we had to do four loops. Because it's a race, the running is fast. The bike riding is basically resting for more running. The teams who win tend to switch off frequently.

How did my partner and I do? Well, one of the keys to success in the Ride and Tie is actually riding the bike. And my partner ran past the bike on our first dropoff (I dropped it on the left side of the path, and he looked right!). I thought it was hilarious. So we didn't win, but we got more exercise!

After the race, one of our Honorees spoke about his ordeal with myeloma. When he was first diagnosed several years ago, he was in Stage 4 -- that's the most advanced stage which means you don't have much time to live. He's been fighting for years, with four rounds of chemo and three remissions. Some of the treatments sounded horrible. One is related to the mustard gas used as a chemical weapon in World War I. He's been cancer and tumor free for 22 months, thank goodness. But the effects of the treatments linger. Some of his lung sacs have crystallized. He had to have surgery on his colon and intestinal tract because, as he said his doctors put it, if you keep putting Drano into your pipes, the pipes will dissolve eventually. The treatments also affected his short term memory.

He lived alone and had some very rough times physically and emotionally during the treatments. What kept him going, he told us yesterday, was Team In Training -- looking at the pictures of us on the TNT web site where he could see us struggling to train for these endurance events -- this actually kept him going when even Vicodin couldn't stop the pain.

While I knew our fundraising was important to find better medicines and treatments, I had no idea our work could have such a direct effect.