Hello, my name is Jim Galvanek. As mentioned above, I am participating in a fundraiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and my goal is to raise $140.6K between April 10th and June 14th to fund research to find cures for blood cancers. My fundraising goal comes from the total number of miles in the 2008 Lake Placid Ironman, which I will be participating in on July 20th. Before I ask you to contribute to my campaign, I would like you to know about my personal story. In the spring of 1998, I was a happy, carefree, 27-year-old architect, living with friends from Penn State, from where I had graduated college. I had just bought my first home, my world was going full speed ahead and I felt invincible. Then, one day, it became extremely difficult for me to see out of my right eye. I was experiencing a burning sensation, similar to the one you can get from staring at an incandescent light bulb for too long – but it didn’t go away. After three days of covering my eye while working on my computer, three coworkers convinced me to go to the doctor. Two days and five doctors later, on May 5, 1998, I was diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (“CML”), a blood cancer much more prevalent in adults in their 60s and 70s than those in their 20s. I have to say that my diagnosis was something hard to accept. Cancer? Not me...That stuff happens to other people -- people I read about in the newspaper or see on the news. I have to admit it took me a long time to begin to understand the full ramifications of what it meant to have cancer, and later on in life, to be a cancer survivor. Over the next few months, I spent my time traveling to different cancer bone marrow transplant clinics across the country. Since my leukemia was testing at the “accelerated” or “blast crisis” phase at times, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle put me on their “get him in quick” list. I would be receiving a bone marrow transplant from an unrelated donor – a man from San Diego – and I had been told that my chances of reaching the 5-year “cure” date were between 40 and 80 percent (depending on which phase I was testing at during my facility visit). Bone marrow transplantation was – and still is – the only curative treatment for CML. It also is known as one of the toughest medical procedures to withstand. In October, I packed up my stuff in DC and headed to Seattle for four months, along with my mom and sister. My mom was my official caregiver and my sister did everything from shaving my head to providing levity when we needed it. It rained most of time I was there. In fact it was the rainiest November and December on record at the time! It’s a beautiful city in the summer, but those winters are tough – very wet and gray! I entered the hospital on the 11th of November and had three days of intense chemotherapy and three days of intense radiation to kill my own blood system, so that a new one could come in and take over. On the 7th day in the hospital – my “Day Zero,” I received the bone marrow transplant. I really don’t remember much from those days. The medications kept the nausea and pain somewhat under control. The nurse coordinator told me that the transplant was similar to a three-month long hangover. She was right – I threw up for weeks. I was in the hospital for 28 days after day zero, waiting for the new marrow to graft with my system and organs, which contained different DNA. Several weeks after my transplant, Graft Versus Host Disease (“GVHD”) set in. Basically, the marrow that I had received from my donor was attacking my body and I was unable to eat for over a month. Thus, I walked around with an IV in a backpack to give me nutrition. When I was taken off the IV, I had to drink over 100 ounces of water a day to keep my kidneys flushed – otherwise, the medications would have damaged them. After my four-month stay in Seattle, I moved back home to DC and, at age 28, my mom moved in with my roommate Jimmy and me to be my caregiver. She left in June, when I finally was able to do things on my own and began getting my life back. I could not go back to work until December of 1999, over a year after I had left for Seattle. Since I had a bone marrow transplant from an unrelated donor, it took a full year for my immune system to develop to a point where I could acclimate back into a normal, everyday lifestyle. Almost ten years have passed since my diagnosis and the full ramifications of being a cancer survivor have become clearer to me. While I initially thought that I would just be able to pick back up where I had left off, life had moved on without me – things had changed and I had changed. Reentry into “normal” life was difficult for many years. Then, three years ago, while I still was searching for a way to donate my time and energy to something productive, I saw a flyer to run a marathon and raise money for blood cancer research through the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program. I can honestly say that Team in Training changed my life. It gave great purpose to my life, allowed me to give back to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and to raise money to help patients and their families battle blood cancers. Last November, on the nine-year anniversary of my bone marrow transplant, I ran my fourth marathon. Through the Team in Training program, I have participated in the following events, raising over $46,000 in the past three years: 2005 Alaska Marathon: $6,020 This year will be my ten-year anniversary of “Day Zero” (my bone marrow transplant) and I have set an extremely ambitious fundraising goal -- $140.6K. I have accepted a nomination to participate in the 2008 Man and Woman of the Year fundraising campaign for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society from April 10th – June 14th. I will be participating in the Lake Placid Ironman to raise $140.6k, which is the number of miles in the Ironman (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run =140.6 miles). Please help me in my quest to reach my fundraising goal and stamp out these deadly cancers by making a tax-deductible contribution to support researchers who are working to find cures for leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. Your donation will make a difference. If you prefer to donate by check, please make it payable to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and mail it to my home address at: My sincere thanks for your support, |