Help Michael raise money

I’ve been fortunate that cancer had a relatively small impact on my life growing up (shout out to heart disease and Alzheimer’s). Still, it says something about the cruelty and pervasiveness of this disease that I can name so many people who have suffered or died from it.

I remember Mary Beth, a neighbor and family friend who died of childhood cancer. Mark, my cousin’s husband, who died of leukemia and left behind a widow and two young children. The sadness and fear when the mother of a grade-school friend died from breast cancer, and the relief when my Aunt Irene survived it years later. I remember friends as teenagers, terrified after learning that a parent had cancer, then watching them endure chemotherapy and radiation.

For a long time, I felt lucky that cancer hadn’t hit closer to home. That has changed.

My mom’s boyfriend, Steve, who pulled her out of a decade of despair following my dad’s death, fought throat cancer. My Uncle Lenny nearly died from leukemia shortly after retiring from the one and only Kohn’s Deli. No one can outrun cancer forever. This past year, my wife’s aunt, Mary, died in July after cancer ravaged her body. And my friends Dan and Sydney, who invited me to run this race with them, lost Sydney’s mom, Julie, to uterine cancer just months before they welcomed their first child, Jane.

I’m running this marathon for all of them, and for everyone else who has faced this disease, whether I knew them personally or not.

I’m also running because cancer brings another burden that families shouldn’t have to carry: the financial strain that can come with treatment, lost work, and recovery. On top of the fear, pain, and uncertainty of cancer, no family should have to worry about how they’re going to make ends meet.

That’s why I’m running for the Expect Miracles Foundation. The Foundation supports cancer research and provides financial assistance to young adult cancer survivors through its SAMFund.

If you can, please donate. Help me honor the people I’ve known and loved who have fought this disease, support those fighting it today, and give others a chance to keep fighting until, one day, we find a cure.