HELP BEN AND KRISTIN!!

With Ben and Kristin out of town, I suddenly find that I have a lot of free time in the middle of the day!

I am their "honored teammate" in Team in Training. In early October I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, and I am about eight weeks out of chemotherapy. I wanted to write a few words on the fundraising blog to thank Ben and Kristin for all their support and hard work. These two are training very hard, and are eating a lot of cottage cheese! I don't think a day goes by without some kind of intense training activity that would leave most of us dead. Kristin, helpfully, keeps a calendar with stickers so that all can know her activities; Ben is unsurprisingly a little more stealthy!

And they're working for a good cause. The money they raise will help ease the suffering of those who have cancer and will, hopefully -- in fact, surely -- contribute to the end of all suffering caused by blood cancers. Of course, the doctors can't do research without money, so give money!

Cancer is a nasty business on all fronts. In addition to raising money to treat the body, the very act of raising money inspires hope in the souls of the sick. They feel, quite correctly, as if their community is supporting them and trying to do things to help them. This, for the people who currently have cancer, is probably the most important contribution that those who give donations make.

Of course, no one would have anything to donate to unless people like Ben and Kristin generously give of their time and efforts to run and swim long distances for money. To them, and to the other participants of the Team in Training, many thanks are owed. Ben and Kristin are two extraordinary people in their kindness, thoughtfulness, compassion, and generosity, and it comes as no surprise to me and all who know them that they would devote so much time to helping people, most of whom they have never and will never meet. It is, to a large part, because of people like them that people who are sick have hope. They are easily two of the nicest people in New York City! (A harder feat to accomplish in my native Kansas, but impressive nonetheless!)

So you should give money to support cancer research, you should give money to support cancer patients, and you should give money to support Ben and Kristin!