So I might as well do it: Pan-Mass Challenge

Rebecca Hopkins, now a junior at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, has survived a brain tumor, surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. She will be one of 5,000 bike riders next week in the Pan-Mass Challenge, the annual 192-mile bike ride to raise money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

She will ride in honor of her doctor, Samuel Blackman, who treated her when she was a teenager.

"To be able to help people and give them a better life, that's great," she said. "It's something I can do, so I might as well do it."

She was first diagnosed with cancer at age 11. Part of her brain tumor was removed, but began to regrow in a few years. After radiation, she is now virtually symptom-free.

Dr. Blackman says, "When you save a pediatric patient, you don't just save a life, you save a future. Rebecca and her fight are proof positive of that. This is a person who I know is going to make a difference in this world."

"We have the cachet of being the Tour de France of charity events," said Barry Starr, the founder of the fund-raising event.


Advice to cancer survivors: Keep on truckin’. And bikin’.

Read about another Tour de France cyclist and cancer survivor.

Thanks to Adrian Walker for the source article in today’s Boston Globe.