a little kiss

I've had trouble posting anything recently because my focus is on my running. As most of you may know, I am running the NJ Marathon and raising money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I've been so focused on my running and health - and so far, knock on wood, doing really well - that blogging is down a few steps on the list. In all, my running is taking an hour or two or three out of my day.

But, I'm still surfing the web and finding inspiration. This one comes via Deacon Greg Kandra and tells a great story:

A woman who doctors believed could remain comatose indefinitely recently
revived after her husband asked her for a kiss.

Just ten days after giving birth to her son, Telford, Shropshire resident
Emma Ray suffered a heart attack and collapsed while shopping with her husband,
Andrew. Andrew performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on her, after which she
was taken to a hospital where doctors were able to restart her heart.

“She could wake up the following day, she could wake up in a month, or you
may be left with a sleeping beauty,” Andrew Ray said a doctor told him,
according to the Daily Mail.

Andrew went to great lengths to try and rouse his 34 year-old wife from her
comatose state, playing recordings of their baby son Alexander and of their
daughter Ella and songs from their wedding reception.

“I would speak softly to her, clasp her hand, pinch her fingers, all the
time telling her I loved her or begging her to wake up. By the time I asked her
to kiss me I was approaching my wits' end,” he told the Daily Mail.

He bent over his wife’s hospital bed and said “Emma, if you can hear me,
please just give me a kiss.”“'What happened next was beyond my wildest dreams,”
he told the Daily Mail. “She turned her head towards mine, puckered up her lips
and gave me a little kiss.”

“I couldn't believe it. My heart felt like it was going to leap from my
chest –it suddenly felt like a huge weight had been lifted.”

Doctors who witnessed the kiss were astonished by her response.Emma ray
continued to drift in an out of consciousness. Her brain had been oxygen-starved
after her heart attack, resulting in short-term memory loss.

She was eventually allowed home but requires ongoing rehabilitation for the
brain damage.

“The recovery is awful because I have so little memory,” Emma told the
Daily Mail.Her husband said he was grateful his wife had survived.

“She can walk quite well holding hands now, and at least our kids still
have a mother and I still have a wife,” he said, according to the Daily
Mail.

I run to add another day

About four and a half years ago I started running, and soon after decided to run a marathon. I started running because the doctor kept telling me that with my high cholesterol and family history of heart disease, I was looking at a heart attack and possibly death by age 55. I started running to prevent that. Since then I've done my best to keep up my physical activity, never great at it, but I have become fitter than I was before 2004.

I have seen first-hand the effects of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes in my family. They're all terrible diseases, and in many cases, preventable. I run to prevent. I run to raise money to prevent them. I run to add another day.

Right now I am pre-training for the New Jersey Marathon in May of 2009 and I'm raising money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. This article I found on Reuters.com explains why this is so important:

Cancer to pass heart disease as No. 1 killer

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cancer is on pace to supplant heart disease as the No. 1 cause of death worldwide in 2010, with a growing burden in poor countries thanks to more cigarette smoking and other factors, global health experts said on Tuesday.

Globally, an estimated 12.4 million people will be diagnosed with some form of cancer this year and 7.6 million people will die, the U.N. World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer said in a report.

"The global cancer burden doubled in the last 30 years of the 20th century, and it is estimated that this will double again between 2000 and 2020 and nearly triple by 2030," according to the report.

By 2030, 26.4 million people a year may be diagnosed with cancer, with 17 million people dying from it, the report forecast.

In men, lung cancer was the most common form in terms of new cases and deaths, while breast cancer was the most common type among women in new cases and deaths, according to the report. More men than women get cancer and die from it.

"This is going to present amazing problems at every level in every society worldwide," the IARC's Peter Boyle said at a news conference.

In the near term, cancer is expected to bypass heart disease as the leading killer globally in 2010, American Cancer Society Chief Executive Officer John Seffrin said. Cancer currently accounts for about one in eight deaths worldwide.

Trends that will contribute to rising cancer cases and deaths include the aging of populations in many countries -- cancer is more common in the elderly -- and increasing rates of cigarette smoking in poor countries.

Some rich countries have made progress in cutting cigarette smoking, which causes most cases of lung cancer as well as many other illnesses. In the United States, the most recent figures show that for the first time since records have been kept less than 20 percent of adults were smokers in 2007.

However, cigarette companies are finding new customers in developing countries. Seffrin noted that 40 percent of the world's smokers live in just two nations -- China and India.

Decades ago, cancer was considered largely a problem of Westernized, rich, industrialized countries. But much of the global burden now rests in poor and medium-income countries.

Many of these countries have limited health budgets and high rates of communicable diseases, while cancer treatment facilities are out of reach for many people and life-saving treatments are seldom available, Boyle said.

"There are more deaths in the world from cancer than from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined," Boyle said.

At the same time, progress against cancer has been reported by authorities in such places as the United States and Europe.

For example, health authorities in the United States reported last month that cancer diagnosis rates are now dropping for the first time in both men and women and previous declines in cancer death rates are accelerating.

They attributed the progress to factors such as regular screening for breast and colorectal cancer, declining smoking rates and improved treatments.

Cancer-prevention opportunities exist in countries of any income level, Boyle said, noting that many types of cancer are caused by individual behaviors such as smoking.

Some other "modifiable risk factors" for cancer that Boyle cited included alcohol consumption, too much exposure to sunlight, lack of physical activity and obesity.

Help fight the good fight. Donate if you can.

Team BadAss: Eric Harr

A long time ago, in a blog far, far away, I named professional athletes to Team BadAss. These are the professional athletes that embody what a professional athlete should be.

Today, I'll just do a quick intro of one the members of Team BadAss Eric Harr:Eric Harr was a guy who had fallen out of shape, was overweight, and working at a law firm in the Virgin Islands. He decided to sign up for a triathlon to help get him back into shape and ended up doing pretty well (finishing ahead of some pros).

Harr decided he was going to do something that few ever have the courage to do, follow a big dream. He decided, after just one race, that he was going to become a pro. He left his work, trained, ate well, trained some more, and by the end of his first year as a "pro" triathlete he was ranked #6 in the world.

Since then Eric Harr has continued racing, reported health segments on television, written a few books, given a ton back to charity, started his own online magazine, and raised awareness for global poverty and national obesity.

Here's a guy who had the balls, yes I said it, the balls to leave his profession for something many of us can only dream of. Granted, he can probably thank genetics a little, but still. How many of us have dreams that go un-pursued?

He dreamed big, made it, and is giving back.

Four years ago when I decided to dream big and run a marathon with no previous running experience, I bought Eric Harr's The Portable Personal Trainer. It's a small pocket sized book with health and fitness tips. Now that I'm training for another marathon and raising money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, I pulled out the book and flipped through it.

The first tip is to not only dream big, dream huge! "It's time to demand more from your body," says Harr on page 11.

Done!

(I think that means that I should go for a run today...)

Lance and Me

I hope to some day have a beer with Lance Armstrong, until then I'm glad to be a Team Livestrong Runner. For those of you who do not know, I finally feel ready to run a Marathon again. I've signed up for the NJ Marathon on May 3, 2009. I will be running and raising money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

November's Men's Health has a story on 20 Heroes of Health and Fitness that includes Lance Armstrong. How could you not?

(Side note: The cover of the issue spotlights Barack Obama as one of the 20 Heroes on Health and Fitness. Although not a political piece, I think their timing is suspicious. Plus, it's a weak piece - basically naming him a Health and Fitness Hero simply for being fit even though he's a busy guy and being an inspiring guy. I might have to write them a letter.)

Back to Lance. The article focuses on his work through the Lance Armstrong Foundation. They use their $40 million budget to improve the lives of people living with cancer.

"I'm surprised almost every day that this country isn't more appalled at the devastation cancer creates. Not every few days, but every friggin' day, 1,500 Americans die from this bastard of a disease," Lance is quoted as saying in the article.

I agree with Lance and would love to see more prevention and screening education in the US. That's why I'm running for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

If you'd like to help, please go to my fundraising website and donate what you can. Prayers are also welcome.

(Photo courtesy of Time.com)

Update: I did write Men's Health a letter voicing my disappointment for putting Barack Obama on the cover as a Hero of Health & Fitness.

LiveStrong!

Many people know that I am (in my own small way) an advocate for those living with cancer. The charity I always give to and ask people to help is St. Jude Children's Research Hospital because of the help they provide to children living with cancer. Although I never was able to run the 2006 NYC Marathon, I managed to raise over $1000 for St. Jude.

On the side, I've also been a fan of Lance Armstrong - as an athlete - but also with his work through the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I was recently on the website and saw a blog post (copied below) from Dr. Harold Freeman. Lance is taking the fight to the Presidential candidates this year in the hopes that they'll listen and do something about the disparity written about here:

Dr. Harold Freeman talks about Cancer in Harlem

I'm happy to write in today and share some of my thoughts about the cancer community in which I serve. Tomorrow I celebrate 40 years of service in Harlem.

Any substantial approach to reducing the cancer death and improving the cancer survival rate in an underserved community such as Harlem, must take into account the overarching causes of cancer disparities which are poverty, lack of health insurance and low educational level. There are two levels of solution, national and local:

(1) At the national level we need policy changes that would promote universal access to health care. Currently, there are an estimated 46 million Americans who are uninsured;

(2) At the local level we should promote community programs which assist and guide poor and uninsured Americans through the very complex health care system. I have pioneered such a program. It is called Patient Navigation. The role of this program is to eliminate any barriers that individual patients face in seeking to obtain timely quality cancer care. This kind of personal one-on-one assistance has been very effective in Harlem and is being applied at many other sites around the country; and

(3) We must also create effective public educational programs which will promote primary and secondary cancer prevention.

Someone asked me recently to share some of the highlights of my service in Harlem. I would like to share the following:

- I have gained a deep knowledge of the meaning of poverty and the meaning of race as determinants of survival and using this insight to enlighten scientists and the American public about the relationship between race, poverty and cancer.

- In 1979 I established free breast cancer screening and diagnostic centers both in the community and at Harlem Hospital. Both of these programs are still operating today.

- In 1990 I initiated the nation's first Patient Navigator program at Harlem Hospital. In published studies, I showed that there was a marked increase in 5 year survival from breast cancer when women were offered free screening and were navigated to rapid resolution including treatment if necessary. The 5-year breast cancer survival rate in Harlem increased from 39% before intervention to 70% after intervention.

- With a leadership gift from Ralph Lauren, I founded the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention in 2003. This Center is having a deep impact on providing access to screening, diagnosis and timely quality cancer treatment irrespective of the patient's ability to pay for services.

- For 25 years I was Program Director of a Surgery Residency Training program at Harlem Hospital. More than 100 surgeons were trained in this program which was fully approved by the American Board of Surgery.

- Through my work as a surgeon in the community of Harlem I was promoted to positions of National importance such as National President of the American Cancer Society and Chairman of the US President's Cancer Panel. This gave me the opportunity to look at the entire nation through the lens that I had developed in my work as a cancer surgeon in Harlem. To the extent that I have made contributions to the nation in cancer control, I attribute my success to my opportunity to work as a surgeon in Harlem. This allowed me to gain some understanding of the human conditions in which cancer and other diseases occur and to teach that we must understand those conditions -- economic, cultural, social, environmental, and political conditions -- in order to find remedies and solutions to the problem of excess mortality from cancer in poor communities.

Over 40 years I have seen significant progress in cancer outcome overall in America as well as progress in poor and minority communities. This is good. But while black Americans, for example, have improved survival overall from cancer, the most frustrating reality to me is that the gap in 5 year survival between black and white Americans has not changed in these 40 years.

In another 40 years what would please me would be that we as a society eliminated the disconnect between what we discover and what we deliver to all American people irrespective of their ability to pay and close the gap between what we know and what we do.