November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month

By the time this article is in print the Free to Breathe 5K Run/Walk and One Mile Memorial Walk will have ended. I have been very busy in the last few months trying to get the event organized. I am looking forward to sharing the day with my many friends and supporters. Thank you to all who ran, walked, volunteered and donated to make our inaugral event a success. I'm so grateful to you all!

Yoko and I are attending another Free to Breathe event on November 7th in Jacksonville, being organized by my friend Julia Stoud. Julia and I met at the National Lung Cancer Partnership's Lung Cancer Advocate Summit held in Dallas in April of this year. Julia use to work as a stockbroker and is a lung cancer survivor. Like me, she was shocked to learn how little funding lung cancer research receives, despite the fact that it is the number one cancer killer. We are now working together and hope to become the organizers of the Florida Chapter of the National Lung Cancer Partnership. Our goal is to enlist like minded people to help us do Free to Breathe events all over the state of Florida. We'd like to build our effort into something that marks November as lung cancer awareness month, the way October is associated with breast cancer. We have a very long way to go.

I must say, these days I am feeling pretty lucky. After getting my diagnosis, I hoped to live long enough to see my oldest daughter get married, which I did in June of 2008. Here we are, more than a year and a half later, and I am still going strong. I've been able to write a column in the Sun each week, be involved in numerous charitable activities, play golf, continue to build my business, travel, and in general do all the things we've always done.

There are still a lot of things I would like to do. Today on the 16th hole of Bobcat Trail I hit a good drive down the center of the fairway and had 179 yards left to the pin. I took out my 5 wood and hit a clean second shot with plenty of distance straight at the pin. When we got to the green, I looked for my ball but didn't see it. At first I thought I had it it too far, but then I noticed a ball mark 10 feet in front of the pin. I walked up to the pin and there was my ball at the bottom of the cup. Life doen't get any better.