Loss

Dear all,

I just received some terrible news. On Sunday, one of my personal honored heroes, Amanda Post, lost her battle with leukemia and passed away from complications of host-graft disease after her bone marrow transplant. She was 14 years old. She had been very sick for a long time, and had been in intensive care for weeks before she was moved to palliative care. Her family was with her when she passed, and they said that she was able to open her eyes and knew that they were there before she died.

The loss of Amanda is hitting me quite hard. Her cousin is a good friend of mine, but I've only met her once or twice, so it's not a deeply personal loss. There's some survivor's guilt, a sense that it's unfair that I made it while she didn't. I suppose what I feel is helplessness: no matter how many marathons I run, or how much money I raise, or how many people I manage to inspire to join this cause, or even how many advances they make in research and treatment, people will still be dying of this disease. My own easy path through it has, I think, somewhat blinded me to that. I meet tons of survivors doing amazing things all the time for the Society, but those who never make it remain somewhat behind the scenes. That is, until it's someone you know.

It would be somewhat glib, I think, to say that Amanda's death is rededicating me to the cause, and inspiring me to run even more and raise even more money to eradicate this illness once and for all. While I would never have joined Team in Training and would probably never have started running if I hadn't had cancer, that's not why I do it. I run because it makes me stronger, and because it's evidence that I'm stronger than I give myself credit for, and because my success at running means that I can do lots of things that I don't think I can do. I'm involved with the team because the more people who realize this, the more good those people can effect in their lives, the lives of others, and the world around them. Team in Training is far more than a fundraising group for blood cancer: it's a snowballing force for change in the world. A small snowball, perhaps, but a snowball nonetheless. Yes, the Team has raised millions and millions of dollars for research since its inception, but it will never be enough to have prevented Amanda's death, and it will never be enough to prevent all such deaths. What Amanda has helped me realize is that the real force of the Team is in this snowball, and that's why I think it's so important.