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.

I recharged my purpose batteries: Purpose and long life

For 77 years, Marge Jetton, a nurse, had identified herself proudly as a doctor's wife, and found meaning in the work she did to support her husband. Their partnership was magical, she says, but ended abruptly when he died suddenly.

She grieved for months, and then she regrouped. She began volunteering again at her church, worked as a fundraiser for a gospel radio program, and delivered used magazines to elderly hospital patients. "I realized the world wasn't going to come to me, so I went back out into the world," she says. "I reconnected with old friends and felt satisfaction from helping the community. I guess you could say that I recharged my purpose batteries."

That was five years ago. Today, at age 104, she says she owes her can-do vitality to her religious faith and her fervent belief that as long as she's around, she can make a difference.

Advice to widows: You can live fully, and productively, even after your long love has passed away. As Dan Buettner says, Add years to your life by adding life to your years.

Read a very different story of finding a new purpose in life.

Thanks to Dan Buettner for the source story in the November/December issue of AARP magazine.

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.

My passion of drumming in a smoky bar: A Cystic Fibrosis musician

There are days when 26-year-old Emily Schaller can barely breathe because of cystic fibrosis – and playing in smoke-filled bars hasn't helped. She works in a store as her day job. At night, she's the drummer for Hellen, a Detroit rock band that performs concerts to support CF research. She plays in an annual "Just Let Me Breathe" concert fund-raiser.

Through Hellen and her organization, the Rock CF Foundation, she has generated thousands of dollars for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. CF is a chronic disease, genetic in origin, that causes the body to produce thick mucus that clogs the lungs.

"Just in the past few years I thought I wanted to do something I love, which is fund-raising," she says. She feels for her peers who can’t go out for fear of getting sick. "That makes me feel not really good, because I'm playing in a bar two nights a week. But you've got to weigh it. Is it sitting at home and watching a movie, which you don't really want to do, or is it going after my passion, which is drumming in a smoky bar?"

"My parents have always treated me like I don't have CF. It's not going to stop me from doing anything."

Advice: Dedicate yourself to living as fully as you can with your disease, and help beat your disease, like Emily.

Read another hero story.

Thanks to Natasha Robinson for the source article in the May 11 issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer.