The Dreaded “C” Word

These comeback stories, Lester's and Lowell's, resonate with most everybody. But they have special meaning for families like mine, with a cancer legacy. In 1973, shortly after her 48th birthday, my mother was diagnosed with terminal melanoma; she died less than a year later. Her death left an emotional chasm in my life and that of my father and my younger brother. My brother Billy would later take his grief and turn it into a living tribute to my mother, one of the most remarkable success stories in the cancer community. In 1980 he started the Pan Mass Challenge, an annual biking fund-raiser for the Jimmy Fund, the charity arm of Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Center.

It began as a decidedly modest affair, a feel-good ride with a couple dozen cyclists raising a nice chunk of change. By last year the PMC, as it is known in Boston, boasted 5,000 riders and 2,000 volunteers and it donated—100 percent of rider-raised funds go to the Dana-Farber—an extraordinary $33 million to the fight against cancer. Its total gift, after 28 years, now exceeds $200 million. And on Aug. 2, when the 29th ride begins, the Red Sox will be home and Fenway's famed Green Monster will be adorned with the PMC logo, reflecting a six-year partnership between the bike-athon and the hometown team. With Lester's and Lowell's on-field heroics, that partnership has never seemed so powerful.

Back in the early 1990s my brother recognized that there was a growing number of PMC riders who were themselves cancer survivors. So at one kickoff ceremony he asked all of them to stand—there was just a handful—and presented each with a button that said "Living Proof." This year, when he makes the same request, more than 200 PMC riders could rise to their feet.

Ted Kennedy went home to Cape Cod yesterday, flashing a thumbs-up as he left Massachusetts General Hospital. While the Kennedys are notable scrappers, he faces a difficult fight. There is a temptation—not sinister in intent, but wrongheaded—to salute the courage of survivors like Lester by talking about what courageous fighters they are. There is an unfortunate implication that those who succumb to this insidious disease somehow fight less. Cancer is, of course, not that simple and, at times, mercilessly random. It is most often not the fight in the patient but the improving science surrounding that fight that saves so many cancer victims.

By bringing up Lester, it is not my intention to suggest that his success somehow mitigates the senator's struggle or even is a model for it. However, Lester's Fenway mound gem does reminds us that there is a growing population of cancer survivors in this country with pursuits—John McCain's presidential run is certainly one of the notables—and accomplishments that not too long ago would have been regarded as pipe dreams. Amid great sadness, that is wonderful news at a time we all needed some—hope and progress delivered by a Jon Lester fastball.

© 2008