Racing to Save Lives

Welcome to my Team In Training home page.

One year ago, I signed up with Team in Training to train for Lavaman 2009. Unfortunately, I never even got to start.

Let me explain a little. In 2003, I was diagnosed with Leukemia. I had intense chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. In 2006, I had a relapse and repeated the process. Believe me, the second time was a lot harder than the first in many ways. Well all this left me with a few lingering side effects. Throughout most of 2007 and 2008, I battled to keep my teeth, but in November 2008, just after I signed up for Lavaman 2009, I lost that battle, a casualty of the chemotherapy and radiation. I had 16 teeth pulled on one day. Unfortunately, the oral surgeon made a slight error, because I was only supposed to have 8 teeth pulled. Anyway, I took an antibiotic to help prevent infection while my mouth healed. I ended up in the hospital anyway with a high fever, four days before training started. The medical staff thought I had an infection, so they gave me a much more powerful version of the same antibiotic. I was released the next day, but a couple of days later, the first day of Lavaman training, I passed out trying to get out of bed. My blood pressure was dropping precipitously! I was rushed to the hospital again in an ambulance while they kept me alive by pumping me full of fluids. I had had an allergic reaction to the antibiotics! This time I had spent 8 days in the hospital, and my goal of doing Lavaman was way out of reach.

As the days progressed into November, I noticed a problem with my vision. I was diagnosed with cataracts, caused by the radiation treatments. Then in December, I started to get weaker and weaker. By the new year I could barely walk. Rather than thinking about doing a triathlon, I was thinking about whether I was dying. I slowly started recovering through January. I got upper teeth in February, which was nice, but I didn't have any lower ones. In March, I went blind. The cataracts had developed so fast that I could no longer drive and could only use a computer on the high resolution settings with the screen set at four times the normal magnification. I finally got lower teeth in August, so I could eat real food again. Then I lost my job.

Have you ever had a year like that? Well, now I can see, I can eat, I can walk, I can even ride my bike, and I got a new job, so I am going to train for the 2010 Lavaman Triathlon starting next week. I am doing this event, because I hope that someday, nobody will ever have to go through a year like I have just been through because of treatments for leukemia.

You see, I have a dream, and you can be part of it. My dream is that I will be able to hold my grandchildren on my knee and know that they will never have to fear leukemia, lymphoma, or myeloma. If those are cured, they probably won't have to fear a lot of other cancers either. The way for me to make that dream a reality is to help raise funds with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's (LLS) Team In Training.

I need your help. I am looking for a penny. The penny that will take us across the ultimate finish line, the realization of my dream, a cure for blood cancers! You can be a hero to the millions of people around the world who suffer with these diseases by helping me to find that penny.

Please make a donation to support my participation in Team In Training and help make my dream come true. No donation is too small or insignificant. It will only take one penny to cross the line. That penny could be in your pocket right now!

I will be updating my progress on this page, so I hope you come back frequently to see how I am doing. Also, think about this. If I came to visit you, would you buy me lunch? A cup of coffee? If you would, how about just making a donation of that amount instead!

I hope you will visit my web site often. You can also read more about my struggles with leukemia at my web site, www.wilcoxent.com.

Ted