Puzzle Path: Race Against Pancreatic Cancer

My name is Gary, my wife is Mindy, our daughter is Murphy, my father was Gary Sr. and this is our story.

"Lenny is that you?" said my father as he neared the end of his battle with pancreatic cancer. I replied, "what's that dad?" My father looked off into the distance and said "never mind." Lenny was his brother who died from pancreatic cancer a year prior. My father passed away the next morning.

Ever since my father was diagnosed I always looked for ways to learn more about the disease, how it affects others and what impact I can have on the future of the disease. Pancreatic cancer is one of the worst cancers and one of the least talked about top 5 killers. It is highly hereditary and lacks a proper screening. Generally, once you get this cancer you have less than 10% chance to see the 5 year mark. My father battled for a little over two months from diagnoses.

Up until 2020 I owned a gym in Baltimore, MD. I had always done some sort of fundraiser and through the years my efforts grew. Unfortunately, I sold my gym in 2020 and a side effect of that was that I lost my ability to host the type of awareness events I was accustomed to running.

I don't want to say my passion for eradicating pancreatic cancer diminished. I just lost focus of it and one thing led to another. I moved multiple times, I got married, we had a baby, moved again. Beautiful things were happening in my life and my focus had shifted.

This was until I had a life changing experience in the mountains of Boulder, CO. I went to an experiential leadership event called a Diesel Day hosted by Brian Chontosh (Tosh) at his home. Diesel Day has many proprietary elements to it that need to be experienced to understand the full event. The general idea is that you push yourself through a 24 hour endurance event to get to a headspace where you can really dive into the "stuff" in your life. Something about being alone on the back side of a mountain and looking up at the moon while on the 20th hour of constant movement that allows you to actually have the most mental clarity.

I took this experience and asked my self what could I do on my own to achieve a similar stimulus both mentally and physically. I reached out to Tosh and him being an awesome human he immediately set up a zoom and we dove in. We came up with a 24+ hour walk through Charleston. The walk will amass roughly 55 miles and will consist of hidden tasks along the way. The intent is to make this a challenging yet spiritual experience. Also something that peaks interest to raise awareness around pancreatic cancer.

Where this vision goes from here is hopefully to a place that can help more people in more ways when they receive a diagnoses of pancreatic cancer. That life does go on for the surviving family and it can still be a beautiful thing.

For now, we will be donating anything received to The Lustgarten Foundation. We were fortunate enough that my father had good medial and his work took care of him when he could not. There are so many families that, on top of the terrible diagnoses, lose their homes, can't get food and have to worry about things they should not have to worry about.

I was able to spend hours at my dad's bed side in his final months. There is no telling how long an individuals fight will last but they shouldn't have to spend it worrying if their family will lose their house because they got sick. My dad only received one round of chemo before becoming too sick to continue after just over two moths.

Life is too short to not care. We can always do more and we can always fight back.

Gary Jr., Mindy, Murphy