The 61-year-old Northwest D.C. resident will participate in the Lymphoma Research Foundation‘s annual 25- or 50-mile bike ride in upper Montgomery County on Sept. 30.
Have you ridden before?
This will be my third time. I was diagnosed with a chronic form of leukemia, and there is no cure. No one, especially me, likes to hear that they have cancer with no cure. The gift is that my cancer is slow moving. It gives me time to help bring about the cure.
Describe the decision to participate almost immediately after being diagnosed.
This was huge for a person to get the phone call they don’t want and then to have a way to help bring about change.
Why this event specifically?
The Lymphoma Research Foundation is one of the premier funding organizations for lymphoma in the country. Its overhead is low. Its focus is on research, and the way that it goes about deciding which research to fund I liked.
Have you met other riders with lymphoma?
Most people there have some connection to the disease. Lymphoma and its sister diseases affect a half a million people in this country. Lots of us have gotten to know each other. My first year I rode with somebody who was in the middle of treatment. She was in chemo[therapy], and she was out there riding. Then there’s family members — and in my case — friends and supporters and a neighbor whose niece died of it, and a colleague I worked with for years whose wife died of it. People have an emotional connection to this because blood cancers are hard to describe. It’s a condition of the blood or of the lymphatic system, and most people don’t know what that is. To be able to bring the focus on this, to be able to say this is important, is something that I can do. I can help.
– Rachel Baye
