Dear Family, Friends, and Colleagues:

On October 10, 2009, I participated in the Baltimore Running Festival Half Marathon.  Although training for this race provided me an excellent opportunity to procrastinate my dissertation, this race was decidedly NOT about me.  I ran this half marathon to raise awareness and funding for PanCAN--the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network--and in particular to honor a very special person who, with the loving and steadfast support of his wife and children, is bravely fighting this devastating disease.

John Kellermann, my mom's first cousin, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in February 2009.   Although he is only 55 years old, John and his family are no strangers to chronic illness.  At the age of 37, John was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, and he has lived with this highly debilitating condition for the past 18 years.  Since being diagnosed with Parkinson's, John has been a staunch advocate for stem cell research.  He is a board member of the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission, and has testified before the Maryland General Assembly to encourage state funding for stem cell research. He also appeared with Dr. Elias Zerhoni, former director of NIH, before a committee of Congress to encourage higher levels of federal funding for NIH.  John has served as the president of the Maryland Families for Stem Cell Research, and he has led support groups for people living with Parkinson's Disease.  He and his wife, Marye, have also volunteered their time counseling other families about brain surgery options--such as deep brain stimulation, which John has had twice--that are available to Parkinson's patients.  In brief, John has spent nearly two decades promoting awareness, raising funds, and providing hope for people living with Parkinson's Disease.  He has become well-respected in the Maryland Parkinson's community, and has even been featured in the local news: wjz.com/video/ .  Recently, John was chosen to receive one of the two Inspiration Awards at the 2009 World Stem Cell summit for his tireless and courageous advocacy efforts:  www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/.  Because of people like John Kellermann, many millions of dollars have been raised towards the research and treatment of Parkinson's Disease, and great strides are being made towards finding a cure.

Pancreatic cancer, however, has not been so fortunate a recipient of this type of public awareness and funding.  It is currently ranked as the 4th leading killer of all cancers, and 75% of people living with pancreatic cancer die within a year of their diagnosis.  There are presently no means for early detection of pancreatic cancer, and there is no cure for this disease.  To quote the late Dr. Randy Pausch, a brilliant computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University (and author of The Last Lecture), pancreatic cancer is "wildly underfunded" and always has been.  In a testimony before Congress, Dr. Pausch pointed out that pancreatic cancer is one of the only cancers for which NO treatment progress has been made in the last 30 years.  You can view Dr. Pausch's testimony before Congress on the video posted on this page, and you can also view a shorter public service announcement that Dr. Pausch made for PanCAN here: www.youtube.com/watch. Because so few strides have been made towards finding a cure for this disease, John and his family felt that it was important to raise public awareness about pancreatic cancer.  Thus, with their blessing, I ran the Baltimore Half Marathon as a means to raise funds for PanCAN, using as inspiration the unflinching courage and fierce commitment to advocacy with which John and his family have approached Parkinson's Disease.

I will conclude with a personal description of John Kellermann and his family, as they are truly an inspirational bunch.  John's wife, Marye, is a nurse practitioner and nurse educator who founded her own business, NecessaryNP www.necessarynp.com/ to provide workshops to nurses about topics including (but not limited to) nursing certification exam preparation, patient assessment, and teaching.  Marye is also a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, and after recently learning about the exhaustive qualitative research that she is conducting to explain the high attrition rate of nurse educators in the medical field, I was both humbled and shamed for having EVER complained about my own dissertation!

John and Marye have 3 children--Stacye, Marye, and Jake--each of whom has inherited the intelligence, perseverance, compassion, and courage of their parents. Stacye recently completed a degree in nursing at UVA, and she currently works as an Operating Room nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital.  Stacye and I share the same alma mater (Notre Dame Prep), and the fact that she is a fellow "NDP girl" only adds to how great I already think she is!  Marye is a rising senior at UVA, where she plays on the varsity lacrosse team.  It bears mention that UVA women's lacrosse is a perennial ACC powerhouse and one of the most elite Division I women's lacrosse programs in the country.  Balancing academics and athletics at a university as prestigious as UVA is no small feat.  Jake, the youngest of the Kellermann clan, is a rising senior at Loyola Blakefield High School in Towson, MD.  John has frequently referred to Jake as his "right hand man", and at the age of 17, Jake is about the truest embodiment of the term "old soul" that I have ever met.  He is pictured on this page--along with his parents--reading a poem about hope at a stem cell rally that the family attended 4 years ago.  While reading this poem, Jake began to cry and Marye stepped in and finished reading it for him.  It is this type of solidarity that has allowed the Kellermann family to rally around one another throughout both of John's illnesses, and the tenderness, affection, and humor with which they interact as a family is truly something to behold.  I feel extremely grateful to have them as members of my extended family, and everyone who has been fortunate enough to have any member of the Kellermann family in their lives in some way doubtless feels the same.

In closing, I thank you for taking the time to read this page.  I recognize the grim state of the American economy right now, and thus I understand if you are unable to donate to this cause.  If you are able to donate, however, I thank you wholeheartedly in advance for your generosity, as does the Kellermann family.  I would also respectfully ask that you pass this page along to anyone you know who might be willing and able to donate to PanCAN, or who simply might be inspired by reading John’s story.  If you would like for me to honor or pay tribute to the memory of someone you know who has suffered from pancreatic cancer, please let me know and I will purchase a purple bracelet from PanCAN, write the honoree's name on it, and, send it to you.   

In closing, I encourage you to remember that long before anyone’s life is cut short by illness, he or she lives with it.  As a society, we tend to tiptoe around people living with chronic illness and their families, afraid of saying the wrong thing or perhaps intimidated by witnessing someone else’s suffering.  If there is one message that I wish to convey through this fundraising effort, it is to encourage each of you to reach out with open arms to anyone you know whose life is touched in some way by chronic illness.  To paraphrase Dr. Pausch, the human spirit remains intact regardless of the state of the human body.  Never hesitate to acknowledge and experience the human spirit that is alive and well among people living with chronic illness, as they have perhaps more to teach us about living than anyone else in society.

All my best,

Kristin