Row 2 Cure

Do you remember when you were a child? When you could spend all day exploring your neighborhood, riding your bike and playing with your friends?  These are memories that children battling blood diseases will miss.  Spending weeks in hospitals and being too weak to play with friends or go to school is no way for a child to experience life.  The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) is working hard to ensure that children with blood diseases get back to being kids again.  LLS coordinates research into the causes and most-effective treatments of childhood cancers, supports families, patients, and communities touched by childhood cancer, and advocates for funding and legislation focused on finding cures for all pediatric blood diseases.  That is why Team Row 2 Cure is committed to support the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society with our 7 month long Team in Training kayaking event around America’s Great Circle Loop.

The Great Circle Loop is a 5,000-mile network of waterways that circumnavigate the eastern half of the United States.  Every year hundreds of people board powerboats and sailboats and take months exploring a different side of America.  Team Row 2 Cure will do what very few have every attempted and fewer still have accomplished; we will paddle the Great Circle Loop in kayaks.  We launch out of Mobile, AL in February 2017 and head east along the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway to the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and north to New York harbor.  Paddling up the Hudson River and through the Erie Canal will bring us to the Great Lakes and then to Chicago, IL.  In Chicago we begin the final leg of our journey; paddling down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers to the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway arriving back in Mobile next Fall.  5,000 miles, 18 states, 2 kayaks, 1 cure! We believe strongly in the mission and work of LLS and are proud to be part of this event to highlight their dedication.

Follow our preparations and progress online:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1603150919986867/

https://m.facebook.com/row2cure/

What will your donations do?  Here are just some of the ways LLS honors your generosity:

-Encourage scientists to pursue blood cancer research. Grants to young scientists help grow research talent even as federal research funding becomes increasingly limited.

-Develop 'targeted therapies' that kill cancer cells selectively. By hitting specific molecular targets, these treatments don't harm patients' healthy cells, resulting in fewer dangerous side effects.

-Test immunotherapies. Immunotherapies strengthen a patient's own immune system so it can better fight infections and attack cancer cells, reducing the need for damaging chemotherapy.

-Improve the safety of today's cures. LLS funds research to predict, manage and prevent complications in patients most at risk for long-term and late effects of treatment.

-Help patients and their families make informed decisions. LLS supplies information and counseling to help guide patients through their cancer journey and access current treatment and clinical trial options.

-Offer community services. Among the wide array of programs LLS provides are those that link newly diagnosed patients with trained volunteers and that help young cancer patients return to school after an absence resulting from treatment.

-Encourage our state and federal legislators to support blood cancer issues. With your help, LLS brings to the attention of lawmakers the urgent need for increased government funding and support of research and patient access to affordable treatment and quality care.

Thousands of children will be diagnosed with cancer this year alone and their families will go through upheaval most of us cannot imagine.  And yet these beautiful, resilient kids are not giving up no matter the challenges they must face.  We are inspired by their example!  Please join us in fighting childhood cancer. Let’s help the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society support more and more children each and every day. We are asking you to donate what you can because every dollar counts!!

It takes more than one person to make up a team and that’s why I’m asking you to donate to my TNT fundraising page for TNT!

By participating as a member of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) TNT, I am raising funds to help find cures and ensure access to treatments for blood cancer patients.  

Your donation will help fund treatments that save lives every day; like immunotherapies that use a person’s own immune system to kill cancer. You may not know it, but every single donation helps save a life with breakthrough therapies such as these.

Patients need these cures and they need your support.  

Please make a donation in support of my efforts with Team In Training and help get us all closer to a world without blood cancers.

 Thank you for being a part of Team Row 2 Cure!