Times are tough and there are so many causes to support, which makes it hard to decide which ones to support each year.

How do I know my donation will make a difference?

This month is Blood Cancer Awareness Month. And if you don't know much about blood cancers or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS), this month is a great time to learn. For instance:

LLS has invested more than $875 million in research to find cures and better therapies, and as a result:

• survival rates for children with acute lymphocytic leukemia, the most common childhood cancer, have risen in the past 40 years from 3 percent to nearly 90 percent today

• Hodgkin lymphoma patient survival rates have doubled to 86 percent since the 1960s

• survival rate for myeloma patents has more than tripled in the past decade

In fact, approximately 75 cents of every dollar donated to LLS goes to cancer patients and their families or research for improved cancer treatments. Nearly 50% of FDA approved cancer drugs in the past decade were approved as blood cancer treatments, and several have been approved for treating other cancers.

For instance, LLS helped to advance the drugs Velcade and Gleevec for blood cancer patients, and now those drugs are being tested for use in the treatment of lung, brain, breast, colon, prostate, stomach and skin cancers.

Blood cancers are a big problem. More than a million people in the U.S. are currently living with or in remission from leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma. Leukemia and non-Hodgkins lymphoma also both make the top 10 list of the deadliest cancers.

Here are ways even a small donation to The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society can make a difference:

A $25 donation provides patients and their loved ones with FREE informational booklets on their disease to help them make informed decisions about their treatment options.

A $50 donation makes family support groups possible with a trained facilitator to offer comfort and shared experiences for cancer patients and their families.

A $100 donation helps to supply cancer researchers with supplies and materials critical to their research for a cancer cure and improvements to cancer treatments.

YOUR DONATION COUNTS...whether it is $5 or $500.

It means more lives are saved, it makes living with blood cancer a little easier for patients and their families, and it offers better treatment options not just for those diagnosed with blood cancer, but potentially patients with other forms of cancer.

Please make your 100% tax deductible donation today!

In July 2007, my brother Nathan (then age 22) was training as an ROTC cadet in Fort Knox, Kentucky, when he started experiencing chest pain and breathing difficulty.

photo from my brother's ROTC days

They suspected he was suffering from pneumonia. An x-ray at the army hospital revealed a cancerous mass in his chest, and he immediately headed home to Houston.

By October, he was officially diagnosed with Stage II Bulky Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, an advanced stage of the disease. For the next 4-1/2 months he began bi-weekly chemotherapy followed by another 1-1/2 months of radiation treatments.

Me, Nathan and our sister Elizabeth at MD Anderson keeping our spirits up while waiting to start his first round of chemo

Nathan has been remission since April 2008 and is (thankfully!) still cancer free today.

He has graciously agreed to share some of his experiences throughout my Team in Training adventure this fall. Our first conversation follows below:

How did your cancer diagnosis immediately affect your life?

Cancer changed some things for me. The first and most obvious change was that my plans of doing 3 years of service in the military were at an end from the moment I found out I had cancer.

How did cancer change your perspective?

I did my treatments at MD Anderson in Houston, and I saw people of all ages from all over the world struggling with many different forms of cancer.

I saw despair and hopelessness from time to time, but mostly I saw courage, gratitude for the additional time treatments were giving them—regardless of how much or how little time that was—and a will to live for yet another day.

What do you remember most about the people you met during that time?

I remember conversations with a few people in the waiting room whose prognosis was poor. They generally were sticking with treatments to spend a few more months with children or grandchildren. It is a little sobering for me think back to those conversations now and realize they are probably gone by now.

It put my suffering in perspective and gave me courage to see people push forward who were in far worse situations than I was at the time.

Is your time more valuable to you now?

It is sobering to realize that, even a few generations ago, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma would have meant that I would not have lived to see my 27th birthday this past February. I’m grateful for all the money, effort and research that has been put into researching cures for different types of lymphoma that gave me the time I have today.

Welcome and Thank You for Visiting!

Many of you visiting this page know the personal impact that lymphoma has had on my family and offered your support and prayers to my brother during his treatment. We are so ecstatic that Nathan has been in remission since 2008 and that we were able to celebrate his marriage in San Diego last year.

Because of the many advances that have been made in the treatment of blood cancers like his, my brother has had the opportunity to finish grad school, and now he and his lovely wife are expecting twins.

I wish that success stories like this were common for everyone diagnosed with leukemia or lymphoma, and hopefully one day they will be. But this experience changed my perspective forever.

I now have a mission to help find cures and more effective treatments for blood cancers. I have been running for about 3 years now, and have dedicated several of those races to my brother by offering a personal donation to The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) as a part of my race.

After serious reflection, I have decided that my third Houston Half Marathon is the perfect time to increase my commitment to the cause. I want to make a bigger difference and with your help, we can.

As a member of LLS's Team In Training, I will be raising funds to help find cures and better treatments for leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma. With your support, together we can help improve the quality of life for patients and their families as well.

Please make a (100% tax deductible!) donation in support of my efforts with Team In Training and help advance the research for cures.