Cure Kevin

Of all our girls, Marlene, the youngest, is the only one left at home. She gets the added stress of seeing me deal with my cancer on a first-hand, day-to-day basis. Its not easy having to see me live through my chemo side effects and watching my energy drain on a daily basis as the chemo drugs try to win the battle with my cancer. But Marlene has a great heart and, like just about everyone else watching our life, wants to do SOMETHING.

Well, as it turns out, an opportunity for Marlene to be involved in a very big way has opened up. There are several pieces to the puzzle, so let me see if I can lay them out in a way that makes sense.

As many of you know, I work for ING, the Insurance and Financial Services company. One of the basic principles that ING is striving to live by is to be involved in the community. One of the big ways they do this is by sponsoring marathons around the country. They just recently finished running a marathon in New York and the next one they have on the list is in Miami at the end of January. Thus, our first piece of the puzzle is the ING Miami Marathon in January.

The next piece of the puzzle is PanCan, the organization that provides support and fund raising to the Pancreatic Cancer community. One of the ways they raise money is with their TeamHOPE, a team that participates in marathons and other events, raising money through its participants and other contributions.

Once Marlene found out that not only was the marathon sponsored by ING, and that she could raise money for Pancreatic Cancer research, she found her way to help her father - she wants to join Team Hope and run the half-marathon in Miami. As you can imagine, we’re a bit reluctant to ship her off to Miami on her own, so we recruited Melanee’s sister Rachel, who tries to have at least one “physical challenge” every year, to go and participate with her. Hey, we pitched the idea of Miami… in January… and it was a pretty easy sell!

The part where you come in is that we need to come up with about $6000 as their commitment to the team and your contribution, no matter how small, will help them get there. PanCan covers transportation, meals, lodging, and training out of that commitment, so neither Rachel nor Marlene will have much in the way of expenses once they meet their commitment.

If you want to make a secure credit card contribution (which is the easiest way), there’s a link on the right to our fund raising site www.firstgiving.com/kevinwebster. If you’d like to contribute by check or money order, please make the check payable to PanCan and send it to Marathon, (deleted) If you feel compelled to use cash, you’ll have to see one of the Webster clan in person (the idea of sending cash through the mail still worries me a bit).

Please help us by helping Marlene and Rachel run for a cure. Every contribution will get us one step closer to finding a cure for Pancreatic Cancer.