Welcome to Our PanCAN PurpleStride Team Fundraising Page!

Our team wants to make the biggest impact on the lives of pancreatic cancer patients – and we need you to do it!

We’re taking steps at the ultimate walk to end pancreatic cancer, PanCAN PurpleStride, on Saturday, April 27, 2024.

PurpleStride participants raise money to fund vital research that can bring new treatment options to patients; free, personalized, one-to-one support through PanCAN Patient Services; and more.

Here’s where you come in! 

We’ve set an ambitious fundraising goal – because the more money we raise, the bigger impact we make – and would be profoundly grateful for your donation. A gift of any size will help patients and families facing a pancreatic cancer diagnosis.  

Let’s show everyone impacted by pancreatic cancer that we’re fighting for them – thank you for your support!

Now, let me tell you about our brother Michael. He was a great brother, father, friend, boss, coworker and a really funny guy! He may have been a pretty decent golfer Ha-Ha!

I can tell you all you need to know about the type of person Michael was just by telling you what he did. Michael started off his career as an EMT for New York City. Over the years he worked hard and became a Paramedic and then worked his way up to a Lieutenant with the FDNY EMS. As hard as it was sometimes, he loved his job. He loved helping people, he loved the people he worked with and loved his crew. Then 9/11 happened. Michael, as a Lieutenant was stationed at Ground Zero helping, saving, directing his crew. Saving those people meant so much to him, he went back every day for a week for Search & Recovery. So life goes on for us all after that until 2003. Michael gets diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. His doctor tells him “you should probably get your things in order.” Michael didn’t like that answer so he went to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. Michael’s cancer was a rare one. That’s why his first doctor was so pessimistic but when Michael went to Sloan and was assigned a doctor who specializes in his particular type of cancer, well she was just an angel. Anytime a treatment didn’t work, she said “I have something else.” Things went on like that for the next 10 years, during which times were good and bad. Until a day came around the Friday before  Thanksgiving of 2013 when his doctor said, “I’m sorry Michael, we don’t have anything else.” Hospice was set up in his home in Pennsylvania with his wife and son. My brother and sister & I were all very close, so we each agreed to spend a couple of days at his house in Pennsylvania so one of us were always with him and to take some of the burden off of his family. So in the end, Michael went peacefully to the other side with his wife, son & one of his siblings by his side.

It’s not the 4 of us anymore and there’s no way to properly convey the depth of our loss and grief. If walking for the PanCAN PURPLESTRIDE is what we can do to possibly help others, we gladly do it! Because Michael was a giver. A giver of love, of joy, of compassion, of happiness, of laughter and of life.