Heavy Hitter Dinner

A few weeks ago, I attended the 2011 PMC Heavy Hitter Dinner and had the honor of hearing the mother and father of a young family share the story about their son, Brent. In September 2004, one month after I embarked on my first Pan-Mass Challenge, Brent, then two-and-a-half, was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a rare and aggressive childhood cancer. His mother described the initial days of Brent’s illness, diagnosis and treatment. Amid the countless difficulties, she talked about how the disease made clear what really mattered in life and what didn’t. She also conveyed how, among the many horrible times, fighting a disease like this as a family, as a team, and as a community also has so many positive and even fun moments. Brent's father spoke of how he began riding the PMC in 2005 in Brent's honor, without much training due to the care for Brent's disease usurping much of his time. He formed Team Brentwheels which, since 2005, has raised over $2,000,000 for research that will one day unlock a cure for neuroblastoma.

Dr. Lisa Diller, the Clinical Director of Pediatric Oncology at Dana-Farber, spoke next. She said that when she started her career at Dana-Farber in the 1980s, she only had two long-term neuroblastoma survivors, one of whom subsequently relapsed. While she characterized advances in the treatment of neuroblastoma over the past few decades as crude, the survival prognosis for this particular cancer, which primarily strikes young children, had improved to ten percent a decade ago, and is now at almost 30 percent. Dr. Diller described one of the most fulfilling nights of her life which took place recently – a meeting of about a dozen adolescent neuroblastoma survivors who have been her patients over the years.

Dr. Diller mentioned that one of the newer therapies they’re applying uses an agent that targets neuroblastoma cells linked with a radioactive element, which delivers destructive radiation just to neuroblastoma cells with as little damage as possible to the patient’s normal cells. A key element of this treatment is the construction of a lead-lined room, in which the treatment can be administered to contain radiation exposure for everyone else. Such facilities are extremely expensive, but in this case it was made possible by the funding raised by Team Brentwheels, making Dana-Farber one of only eight such centers in the country that uses this new treatment technique.

At the end of the program, much to my relief, and the relief of the 600 others at the event that night, at the end of the speech, Brent, now nine years old and cancer-free, stood up and the room erupted in a standing ovation. This story has a happy ending. Brent, now nine, is LIVING PROOF that the work that the doctors, nurses, staff, and researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute are doing is making a difference in the world. Their work is funded by donations from people like you, hundreds of thousands of people who want to make cancer HISTORY.

Please consider making a donation to support my Pan-Mass Challenge ride. 100% percent of your donation will go directly to the Jimmy Fund, Dana-Farber's fundraising arm. You can rest assured that your hard-earned dollars are going as far as possible to cure cancers like neuroblastoma. Please support this amazing cause that is showing REAL results in the lives of kids like Brent.