My Motivation

A lot of people have been asking recently about the motivation for this ride. I’ve been kind of vague about it, mostly because I didn’t know how the people involved would feel about having their story posted on the web. But, after some discussion, I figure it’s time to give credit where credit is due.

Cancer has a long, ugly history in the future Mrs. Pelekhaty’s family. Stacy’s grandmother died from the disease in her 40’s. At 45, her mother Sandi was diagnosed with stage II ovarian cancer. She had felt a pressure from the tumor, and even complained of bloating, cramping and abdominal discomfort to her physicians, but her symptoms were written off as the effects of menopause. If she hadn’t been so proactive about her own health, and hadn’t known her body well enough to say, “Something is wrong”, her cancer would likely have been terminal. Unfortunately, the symptoms of ovarian cancer are fairly non-specific, and easily overlooked, one of the reasons that the disease is so deadly. Doctors removed a tumor the size of a softball, and suggested genetic testing in light of her family history. When she was tested, doctors diagnosed her with Lynch syndrome.

Lynch syndrome is heritable genetic mutation that increases the risk of a host of cancers, including ovarian, brain and colon among them. The disorder carries a 50% chance of being passed on to the next generation, and doctors recommend genetic testing for direct offspring because there is no good monitoring test for ovarian cancer. CA-125, the main test in use, has trouble detecting early stage cancers and has low sensitivity. Because the mutation had caused ovarian cancer in her family, Stacy was strongly encouraged to undergo testing. It was during a 6-month battle with the insurance company to get approval for Stacy’s genetic screening that we discussed the implications of a positive test and I started to learn about the disease. Eventually, we prevailed over the insurance machine, and were relieved to discover that the mutation hadn’t been passed along in the shuffle of meiosis.

The process opened my eyes to the gravity of ovarian cancer. I have to admit that at the beginning I was clueless; I had no understanding of the symptoms, tests or statistics, and the same was true for almost all the guys I knew. But as I began to learn more, Stacy pointed me toward a fascinating article by Donna Trussel called “Cancer and the Color Wars”. It’s a fascinating read (and much better writing than anything you’ll find here) about the disparity in funding for the deadliest cancers versus the “popular” ones. The idea of painting the axes and tools on the fire truck pink suddenly seemed much less appealing than it had in October. I decided that I wanted to do something more effective, and I wanted the money I raised to go to the HERA Women’s Cancer Foundation, an organization that invests upwards of 85% of monies donated in research, awareness, education and community support as the seek to “Stop the Loss of Women From Ovarian Cancer”. Through the power of Facebook, and the help of HERA board members, Samantha Lockwood in particular, we’ve been able to get this ball rolling. Of course, I would never have started on this path without Stacy, and her mom, who’s been in remission for just under 10 years.