2011 Disneyland Half Marathon

Today I committed to run the 2011 Disneyland Half Marathon and raise money for Lazarex Cancer Foundation. If you aren't familiar with why this is so important to me please take a minute to read my cancer story in the link on the right side of this page.

OK, now that everybody is up to date there is some more specific information that you should know. Lazarex has been helping me with my travel expenses to and from Houston for nearly a year now. Without their help my financial life would be in big trouble. Recently they told me about their Team For Life fundraising program. It allows people to get into popular Marathons and Half Marathons after they fill up by raising money for their organization. They wanted to make me one of their VIPs, that is a Very Important Patient. This allows them to put a face on the fundraising efforts of the runners. I told them that I was a runner and would like to participate myself. I chose the Disneyland Half for a couple of reasons. The first is that I want to get back to southern California to visit a friend and his new baby girl and maybe go for a bike ride with him. The second is that I haven't been running much so I'm not ready to commit to a full marathon.

This brings me to another reason this is important to me. I haven't been running much because one of the side effects of my current treatment is that I have a pleural effusion. This is an accumulation of fluid in the space between the lungs and the chest wall. The fluid restricts the full inflation of the lungs giving me less than 100% breath capacity. Luckily I have pretty large and efficient lungs from all my past training so this doesn't impede my daily life, but I do feel it when I try to run far or fast. I have been using diuretics to help keep this down. I've also had the fluid drained twice so far. For awhile it looked like it was staying away, but it is back now. Since this doesn't affect my daily life there isn't much motivation for me to take care of this, but having a running goal means I have added incentive to work with my doctors to get this completely under control in one way or another.

Now that you know the whole story please consider donating to a cause that is directly helping me out by following the donate link on the right. It would mean a lot to me and other cancer patients like me. You can also follow this page as I write about my attempts to regain my former glory as an avid athlete.