90 pints, 60 years, 26 miles: Team Red Cross for Boston Marathon 2017

    I’ve donated blood 90 times over the years to the American Red Cross, most recently as a platelet donor.  For that, they put you in a comfortable recliner, and you lie still for two hours with needles in both arms, asking a nurse whenever you need them to scratch your nose.  This felt like doing something that was good every three months, but it was abstract.  It hit home when one of my oldest and closest friends was diagnosed recently with leukemia.  So I’ve decided to donate more often in Rick’s behalf, and I’m collecting money for the American Red Cross, as I’ll be on their team for the April 2017 Boston Marathon, around my 60th birthday.

    This will be my third marathon, after running in 1997 to prove 40 wasn’t fatal, and in 2014 to reclaim the Boston Marathon as ours from those who’d have us live in fear after the bombing in 2013.  So now I’m doubling down on my commitment to the Red Cross, with a goal of $10,000.  Can you help me along the way now?  Please click Donate at my marathon page.   I like to walk the talk; you can help me run the talk.

     Money back guarantee:  If I don’t finish, I’ll pay you back.  -Ken Farbstein

Patient Activists: Swimming Uphill

Three of the best things about Boston occur within a three-week period every springtime: the Boston Marathon, the Walk for Hunger, and the herring run in Weymouth. In each, tens of thousands come together for a single crazily ambitious purpose. Whether they're running 26.2 miles, walking 20 miles for a charitable cause, or swimming 78 feet uphill through fish ladders to spawn, their raw effort and grit are hugely inspirational.

I watched the Boston Marathon again this year, from a vantage point near the top of Heartbreak Hill. The Kenyans and the ordinary shlubs, the blind runners, the wheelchair racers, the runners with artificial legs. I didn't see Dick Hoyt, the 70-year-old father who runs behind his wheelchair-bound adult son Rick, though I read that they, too, finished their 29th Boston Marathon. (Fourteen years ago, when I ran the marathon, my seven-year-old son, seeing me at Mile 24, almost four hours into the race, said, "Daddy's gonna win." Right.)

Of the three, the herring provide the most apt metaphor for patient activists. We're all small fry. The odds seem daunting. But we swim uphill relentlessly: it's what we do. We gotta spawn more of ourselves; that's what we live for.

The game warden told me that once a day or so, when the density of herring becomes crowded enough, they suddenly surge forward en masse over the next ladder. We activists need to keep growing a critical mass, for the same purpose. So, tell your lagging friends to jump in; the water's fine!

For inspirational human stories of patient activist heroes, see Chapter 12 of my book, Getting Your Best Health Care: Real World Stories for Patient Empowerment.

Run the talk: The Boston Marathon

More than 26,000 runners ran the 113th Boston Marathon on Monday. Among them were numerous athletes who were raising money for cancer research, via Dana Farber Cancer Institute's Jimmy Fund, and many others wearing the yellow LiveStrong jerseys of Lance Armstrong's foundation. Some had hand-written on their shirts "for Mom," or other loved ones, presumably cancer victims.

The Jimmy Fund aimed at a fund-raising goal of $4.85 million through the runners' efforts. The runners benefit from the exercise, too, and all of us benefit from their inspiration, and their perspiration.

It was a stirring sight, as always, to see the runners of very different levels of ability.

Bravo! Encore!

Advice: You can walk the talk about fighting disease, and sometimes you get to run the talk.

Read a story about another athlete’s fund-raising to fight disease.