The Dreaded “C” Word

A chill, an emotional nor'easter, blew out of Boston this week with the news that our senior senator, Ted Kennedy, had been diagnosed with brain cancer.

The sorrow and grief on both sides of the Capitol aisle was palpable, a testament to a remarkable transformation. Once upon a time in Camelot, the youngest Kennedy brother was regarded as perhaps unworthy of a seat at the Round Table. And when, tragically, he was required to take on the family legacy, his three older brothers all killed in service to their country, Teddy seemed too immature, too callow, too reckless to bear the weight.

At best, many thought, he would be a partisan hack, a living symbol that would remind the country of what might have been. Kennedy never relinquished his partisanship, but long ago left hackdom behind. He came to understand something that has eluded so many of our leaders from both parties: that progress can stem only from compromise and bipartisan cooperation. And he will one day, hopefully a distant one, leave behind an extraordinary legacy of legislation and leadership.

Kennedy now faces a grim prognosis, and his plight is a reminder of the collective shudder we still feel when confronted by that C word. But last week Boston also produced a thrilling and heartwarming response to that terror. On Monday night at Fenway Park, a little more than a mile from where Kennedy was hospitalized—I have no doubt that the senator, a Boston Red Sox lifer, was watching—24-year-old Jon Lester threw a no-hitter against the Kansas City Royals. Afterward the announcers were quick with the litany of achievement. It was the 18th no-hitter in franchise history, it was the first in Major League Baseball since another Boston youngster, Clay Buchholz, tossed one last September, and it was the first by a Red Sox lefty since Mel Parnell's in 1956. And then came the capper: it was the first no-hitter in Major League Baseball history thrown by a cancer survivor.

In September 2006, his rookie year, Lester was diagnosed with a form of lymphoma. He underwent six rounds of treatment—five months of chemotherapy and one of radiation—before, almost a year later, he worked his way back into the Red Sox' rotation. Two months later Lester was the winning pitcher in game four of the World Series, the clincher for Boston's 2007 championship. Then on Monday came his extraordinary performance.

While nobody beats the catcher, in this case Jason Varitek, to the mound on such momentous occasions—it's his job to embrace and lift up the pitcher—Mike Lowell wasn't far behind. The Red Sox third baseman, the Most Valuable Player of last year's Series, is a testicular cancer survivor and he has a moving new book, "Deep Drive," that details his battle and his triumphant return.

These comeback stories, Lester's and Lowell's, resonate with most everybody. But they have special meaning for families like mine, with a cancer legacy. In 1973, shortly after her 48th birthday, my mother was diagnosed with terminal melanoma; she died less than a year later. Her death left an emotional chasm in my life and that of my father and my younger brother. My brother Billy would later take his grief and turn it into a living tribute to my mother, one of the most remarkable success stories in the cancer community. In 1980 he started the Pan Mass Challenge, an annual biking fund-raiser for the Jimmy Fund, the charity arm of Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Center.

It began as a decidedly modest affair, a feel-good ride with a couple dozen cyclists raising a nice chunk of change. By last year the PMC, as it is known in Boston, boasted 5,000 riders and 2,000 volunteers and it donated—100 percent of rider-raised funds go to the Dana-Farber—an extraordinary $33 million to the fight against cancer. Its total gift, after 28 years, now exceeds $200 million. And on Aug. 2, when the 29th ride begins, the Red Sox will be home and Fenway's famed Green Monster will be adorned with the PMC logo, reflecting a six-year partnership between the bike-athon and the hometown team. With Lester's and Lowell's on-field heroics, that partnership has never seemed so powerful.

Back in the early 1990s my brother recognized that there was a growing number of PMC riders who were themselves cancer survivors. So at one kickoff ceremony he asked all of them to stand—there was just a handful—and presented each with a button that said "Living Proof." This year, when he makes the same request, more than 200 PMC riders could rise to their feet.

Ted Kennedy went home to Cape Cod yesterday, flashing a thumbs-up as he left Massachusetts General Hospital. While the Kennedys are notable scrappers, he faces a difficult fight. There is a temptation—not sinister in intent, but wrongheaded—to salute the courage of survivors like Lester by talking about what courageous fighters they are. There is an unfortunate implication that those who succumb to this insidious disease somehow fight less. Cancer is, of course, not that simple and, at times, mercilessly random. It is most often not the fight in the patient but the improving science surrounding that fight that saves so many cancer victims.

By bringing up Lester, it is not my intention to suggest that his success somehow mitigates the senator's struggle or even is a model for it. However, Lester's Fenway mound gem does reminds us that there is a growing population of cancer survivors in this country with pursuits—John McCain's presidential run is certainly one of the notables—and accomplishments that not too long ago would have been regarded as pipe dreams. Amid great sadness, that is wonderful news at a time we all needed some—hope and progress delivered by a Jon Lester fastball.