"Life is like a movie. Write your own ending. Keep believing. Keep pretending." The Muppets
So you want to know where the money goes, right?
Once Marilyn was diagnosed with breast cancer I was certain I wanted to run for a cause relevant to the situation. Sure, I could run for the breast cancer cause overall with a pink ribbon in my hair, but...
A. that would not differentiate me from the other masses of women who also (wonderfully) support breast cancer;
B. neither Marilyn nor I are fond of the color pink; and
C. I wanted to actually SEE where our time, energy, and resources would be allocated.
With Marilyn, I’ve spent some time at Memorial Sloan Kettering and as I walk the halls, peek into chemo rooms, or lounge in the waiting room, and I can tell you first hand, MSKCC makes a difference. That’s why I decided to run to support MSK and wear Marilyn’s favorite color, purple. My “support” team is called the Purple Hooters (hooters meaning, well, you know). You can be a Hooter Rooter by making a donation, large or small, to my run.
Here are just few examples of how and why our support helps:
- In 2008 MSKCC treated over 488,000 people with both in-hospital and out-patient care. That’s a lot of people! And a lot of expenses.
- MSKCC conducts “clinical and laboratory research to explore how breast cancer develops, devise new methods to diagnose it in its earliest most curable stages, and develop new treatments.”
- MSKCC conducts expensive research to develop more effective treatments with fewer side effects. This means no more puking after chemo. Hooray!
- The nurses are really nice and put up with the millions and zillions of questions we ask each and every visit. Sometimes the same questions twice. Or thrice.
- The nurses let us steal chairs from empty chemo rooms for Marilyn’s chemo parties. And they haven’t kicked us out yet for laughing too loud.
- The doctors at MSKCC let Marilyn parade around with an entourage to all her appointments, usually at least 5 people deep.
- The nutritionist lets me quiz her on all kinds of nutrition facts and statistics, and even entertains my novel idea of getting a degree in nutrition one day, very far away from now.
