Dear Friends and Family...

Dear Friends and Family,

On January 10, 2010, Adam and Beth will both run the 26.2 miles of the Disney Marathon, in support of The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's (LLS) Team In Training (TNT) program. Why are we doing this? Aside from a healthy dose of insanity, it's because of our desire to help LLS's mission: to cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families.

Adam

July 22, 1992 started off as a normal day. I went to summer camp in the morning, and we took a field trip to see the Mets beat the Dodgers, 7 to 5. My mom picked me up. It started to get weird when she didn't make the turn to go to our house that she always made. That's when she told me we were going to the hospital. At the hospital, they told me the bad news - my sister, Stacey, had leukemia. The good news was, as an otherwise healthy 11 year old with acute lymphocytic leukemia, her prognosis was excellent. About two and a half years, a couple of trips to the ICU, a great vacation in Disney World, and more spinal taps than we can count later, Stacey's chemotherapy treatments ended, and she is now a completely healthy 29 year old. Stacey and our entire family owe a huge debt of gratitude to LLS, an organization that helped pave the way in a number of tests and treatments utilized by her amazing team of doctors in the pediatric oncology unit at North Shore University Hospital.

Beth

Everyone knows someone who has been affected or who has lost a loved one to cancer. To me, it hit very close to home. When I was six years old, my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. It was a long battle for her, and when I was 9 and my mother was 42 she finally succumbed to the disease. My mother was a strong lady and when she was diagnosed the doctors told her she had six months to live. She battled for three years for the sake of seeing her children grow up just a little longer. The fight and determination my mother had has stayed with me. She fought hard, and every day as I train for this marathon, no matter how hard the training gets, I think of how hard my mother fought and of all the other people who have both succumbed to cancer and fought to overcome the disease. Although nothing can change the past, LLS can change lives in the future.

Thank you!

26.2 miles will not be easy - for either one of us. But 26.2 miles through the parks of Disney World one Sunday morning is nothing compared to what cancer patients and their families have to go through every single day. For them, the finish line is not some line at Epcot Center. It's a cure. With your help, we can make that happen.

Donations are 100% tax-deductible, and more than 74 cents of every dollar you donate will go directly to funding LLS's mission. Please donate by visiting:

http://pages.teamintraining.org/il/wdw10/TeamJewsforJogging

Don't forget to track our progress on our blog:

http://JewsForJogging.blogspot.com

Thank you, and we'll see you at the finish line!