A MESSAGE FROM Lucia and Michael DeMarco
Eleven years ago, I turned on my phone after an international flight. It pinged with a message from my mom to call her when I could. At the gate of my next flight, she told me Aunt Jenny, her sister and best friend, was dying.
The diagnosis was a type of brain tumor called glioblastoma (GBM). There were no good treatments. She died 19 months later leaving behind her husband, five children and so many hearts that still ache for her.
This is a family of fighters. For eleven years we have been working - with your help - to change the future for those diagnosed with brain cancer through the nonprofit we started called 3000 Miles to a Cure.
And there is hope. Brilliant researchers are working hard on this complex problem and they have well-founded optimism that reasonable treatments are on the horizon. But they are limited by lack of funding for their research.
Though it is the number one cancer killer of children, brain tumor research is not well funded by the National Institutes of Health. This is because funding is allocated based on prevalence in the population. Brain cancer kills so quickly that the proportion of cases in the population at a given time is low, despite its relatively high incidence. If we can extend life expectancy even one or two more years, this could have a massive and accelerating positive impact on the state of research.
We are currently investing in Dr. Keith Ligon’s research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute which is helping glioblastoma patients get access to the latest advances in the diagnosis and clinical trials of these aggressive brain tumors.
Will you help me raise $5,000 for this research?
On October 2, 2023 I will cross the Grand Canyon with a team of people for whom this cause is also personal. We will trek from the North Rim to the South Rim together covering 26 miles and 10,000 feet of altitude change in one day.
Coming back to the Grand Canyon always reminds me of the great grief, love and hope that connects us in this effort to cure brain cancer.
Grief is part of what compels so many of us to cry out for reasonable treatments for brain tumors, but love and hope are the most powerful forces here. We love those lost and their families and friends and we stand in well-founded hope that the future will be different. We are CLOSE to progress.
Please help us. I am so so so grateful.
