Why do 80 plus police officers travel to New York each May to raise funds to fight Neuroblastoma?
Sometimes its important to explain why things happen; the history of the annual and longstanding pilgrimage to New York. Why and how it works.
It’s actually something both quite difficult and quite easy to express. Opting for the easy version first;
For the last eight years officers and staff from the Metropolitan, Essex, British Transport, Kent, Surrey and Suffolk Police Services have made a migration to Manhattan. Their mandate for the journey has been to raise money for children suffering from a rare and often fatal cancer. The cause provides sufficient propriety that other aspects associated with the dignity of the participants’ occupation can slip; a little at least.
Otherwise how could it be that some 85 pairs of legs of varying style, appearance or even ability could appear in Central Park and run some eight laps surrounded as a crowded spectacle? The spectacle coming not only from those legs but rather adorned as they are by crisp white shirts, epaulettes and for most of the 13 ½ miles a helmet or bowler. Bobbies? New Yorkers pretend to be nonplussed by most things but BOBBIES!?
Somehow it works, somehow the curiosity and engagement of the New Yorker, the visitor, the tourist provides an antidote to any potential embarrassment and even an athletic capability which ordinarily would be absent. If only a certain cyclist had realised the benefit in performance enhancing humour….
It’s not just the run and the feat, (or even their feet); it’s the helpers and the hotel and BA and JetBlue and the NYPD. It’s the unnerving sight of the ground staff pulling an Air Bus down a runway as nonchalantly as we might attempt a door entry. It’s the reception at the British Consulate; it’s the strangest mix of warmth and welcome and………
Now is the more difficult version;
I didn't know anything about cancer until 2005. My 3 ½ year old son Jack, introduced me to cancer. The introduction came slowly and surreptitiously - a pain became a limp then a fever and only after much invasion a diagnosis. Jack led us from one scene to another in this opening chapter. And while fear crowded us, drowned us, the illness inoculated Jack from scare. Jack had Neuroblastoma and that didn't change Jack.
What is Neuroblastoma? In simple terms is a cancer that only affects little kids. We are all made of nerves and something makes those nerves. Normally, once born the cells that form our nervous system retire and expire - job done. But kids with Neuroblastoma have an imperfection in the cells’ mechanism and they continue to grow and spread. Being nerve cells’ means the body accepts they have a passport to travel to which ever limb or organ they so desire. Once installed the cells settle in and take over. In my experience the wayward cells are the only imperfection these children possess.
Lots of things happened with a year at Great Ormond Street and local hospitals. At the end of that year came news and it began as it should at the end of a fantastical journey. “We can’t find any of the cancer cells”.......
And that is where it should have ended if this had been a fair or fairytale.
” We think it will come back. If it does there is nothing more we can do. Take Jack home and enjoy the time.”
This was 2006 and it didn’t seem fair because Jack had fought really hard and won, he’d survived and thrived, keeping himself intact and supporting his family. There must have been an answer to the 23 words which terminated hope with such disdain for the unheeding child. Well there was and it arrived in the form of novel therapies being conducted in the USA. We discovered that the UK might have run out of options but Jack had options.
We took Jack to New York and began a life with other families in the Ronald McDonald House on 73rd Street. There was good news and new and good friends. There was a can do hospital. But we only managed the miracle of keeping Jack alive because of the immense and sustained support from family, friends and those with whom we worked at that time. Police officers and staff came from near and far to contribute to the cost of Jack’s treatments. We still cannot comprehend how it happened but the Met sustained us while we remained in America.
The disease often changes, as the child wins on one front the cancer emerges from a different hiding place. Jack spent time in Vermont with a very special doctor. Hope kept coming and Jack kept finding allies and friends wherever we went. There is too much to express and you would be reading this letter for several days to discover all the good things that happened but please trust me 99% was good and even magical.
In May 2009 we realized that Jack need not continue to take the fight to the cancer any more. We said goodbye, knowing Jack had fulfilled his life and fuelled the lives of hundreds of others.
Within the context of Cancer and a child with cancer it is probably assumed that ER refers to Emergency Room. It could, but that ER is a transitory place and although visited and dreaded the ER does not represent the fearful place. It’s just another place.
ER represents a heavier burden. ER is the Elephant in the Room.
ER is the cancer. ER is the disease’s presence and spreading stain upon the future. ER is the parasite that entwines the child’s life. Everyone knows it’s there, flaunting its power. But because you can never see the cancer – excepting in those haloed scans - you can never stand between the illness and directly parry its influence upon your child. ER is the Elephant in the Room; everyone knows it there and knows that its gravity, its effect is to anchor every aspect of life to its pull. But it can be resisted, its fatality fought.
So how do you fight the Elephant in the Room? You introduce a vaccine. The towering influence of the spectral Elephant can be countered by 350 grams of actual Elephant.
Madness.
No. Wait.
Without knowing its measure the little elephant arrived. About 10” high, slightly fluffy, but in an unpretentious way, and with a very sincere trunk. Ellie, she was called.
Ellie was grey, sometimes blue. (There was more than one or rather the one was resurrected occasionally). Ellie had a property that meant she could fit perfectly into the needy space where fears brood under a small boy’s arm. She could affix to his chest, joining in with his breathing. Ellie smelt but only of good things. Ellie could accompany Jack into scans, into theatre and moreover they would emerge. Ellie’s ward meant you could sleep knowing her charge would be ok. Ellie didn’t get tired.
Ellie scared the Elephant in the Room because Ellie was the only one who would not see that Elephant and if you can’t see that Elephant then it does not exist, its dies.
Ellie made the Elephant in the Room hide.
Please don’t think I expected Ellie to cure Jack – she’s not a doctor. No what Ellie did was different.
Ellie inoculated us and Jack from fear and that gift ensured vitality and worth and hope and love, that all of the important things remained alive.
Back to the ‘Trip’.
The PACK has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds to help the children and families who face the same potential fate as Jack. It started in a small way with a man whose modesty prevents me from identifying him as anything other than the Man Behind the Expedition, (Taff Edwards MBE), running with a colleague the N.Y. marathon. M.B.E. came back with others the following year to ride from NY to Rhode Island. Jack and Yvonne took part in that venture.
Then a relationship formed with Robb Corbett and Kevin Sinclair and the NYPD; this developed the now annual half marathon in Central Park. Last year our status was assured when the park’s horse and carriage drivers could be heard explaining to incredulous passengers both who we were and why we were causing such a stir.
British Airways and JetBlue have been long standing friends – the relationship is special on many levels and there is no doubt that without their contributions the PACK’s ability to complete their mission; raise money and manage the trip would be severely compromised.
I know with absolute conviction that this trip will be a success.
J-A-C-K is entering a partnership with NCCA, (Neuroblastoma Children’s Cancer Alliance - UK based) and SKC, (Solving Kids Cancer - New York based) to launch an international trial based in the UK and USA. This year’s trip and money raised by the runners will support this project
Thank you for being part of J-A-C-K’s PACK 2014 and helping all those suffering from and affected by Neuroblastoma.
So thank you for reading about the trip and why the group takes the trip so seriously.
Please donate.
Richard Brown
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