Save the taste buds!

Imagine life without your favorite foods. Imagine everything began to taste too salty, very bitter, or even metallic. For all the people that will be diagnosed with cancer this year, the chemotherapy treatments they will undergo will take their appetites and change the way their favorite food tastes. Imagine if chocolate no longer tasted like chocolate!

Please make a small donation and join my campaign to save the taste buds - join the fight against cancer: http://www.pmc.org/egifts/SD0131


Each year nearly 1.4 million new cases of cancer are diagnosed in the United States, a figure that does not include the 900,000 new cases of skin cancer diagnosed annually. Cancer is the second leading cause of death (after heart disease) in the United States, accounting for 560,000 deaths every year. While more than 3 million people are diagnosed with cancer around the globe each year, the figure most likely represents just a percentage of people who have the disease but remain undiagnosed due to decreased access to health care in different parts of the world.

The treatments that cancer patients must endure are painful. Chemotherapy makes their hair fall out. It alters the way their food tastes. It destroys their appetite. As if receiving the news that "it's cancer" isn't bad enough, the treatments needed to kill the cancer are so toxic that sometimes they kill the patient too.

This summer on August 1st and 2nd I will be riding 192 miles (309 kilometers) across the state of Massachusetts in my third Pan-Mass Challenge. Over the last two years I raised over $10,000 in memory of my family and friends that have been taken away by cancer. I expect that this year, due to the economy, my fund raising is going to be an even bigger challenge. I have set a modest goal of $5,000 this year with 100% of every dollar going directly to the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

My family has seen it's share of cancer over the years. My grandmother, one of my great aunts, and lots of cousins; only one survivor. Friends from high school and summer camp who never saw their 30th birthday. Cancer does not discriminate. Cancer doesn't care how old you are or if you have children. Cancer never takes the day off, and neither should we.

So readers, I'm asking you to think about your life, your family, your friends. The probability is very high that you know someone who has had cancer. Please consider that this ride, the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge, gives 100% of the rider-raised donations directly to The Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for the treatments and research that save lives. It helps fund early detection programs that often times mean the difference between life and death. Every dollar raised brings us all one step closer to a cure.

I am asking you to please make a 100% tax-deductible donation to help in the continuing fight against cancer; each donation brings us all closer to a cure.

To donate online, go to http://www.pmc.org/egifts/SD0131

PS: I’d like to ask one more favor. It would be so great if you would share this post with one of your friends or family members and ask them to make a a donation too. Just think how much more money we could raise in our effort to rid our lives of this horrible disease.