In 2007, while vacationing with his family in Italy, Jake Silberg began feeling ill. After two weeks in a Rome hospital, he was diagnosed with Burkitt’s lymphoma, a rare and aggressive blood cancer. He was flown back to the US, where great medical care and support from his family, friends and community all were critical to his recovery. So was peer-to-peer support, which Jake says played an important role in getting him through the challenges presented by the intense treatment that rid his body of his cancer two years ago. "I gained a lot of strength from my peer mentor, Weldon, a young adult cancer survivor my doctor connected me with. It was so incredible to see him fresh from running the NYC marathon, getting ready to go to college to become an oncologist...He showed me how my life could be and helped me understand that I could get through this and beat cancer."
Fast forward to September 2009. Jake is a featured speaker at The Nation's Tri Inspiration Dinner, attended by more than 1,500 triathletes, many of them Team In Training participants. Jake reminded the triathletes that he got through the toughest days of chemotherapy by saying to himself that “you can do this, just hold steady.” He told the triathletes to remember that refrain when they faced the challenges of the race course. The next day, he was on the course cheering on the participants and running the last mile with a triathlete friend and his parents. He also gives back to others as a member of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s First Connection peer counseling program.
Jake recently took our young adult cancer survey, produced in conjunction with the I'm Too Young for This! Foundation (see:http://survey.i2y.com), to raise awareness about the unique challenges young adult cancer patients face. If you're a young adult cancer patient or young adult cancer survivor, we want to hear from you. As an added incentive, for the first 400 survey takers - 1 in 8 will win a $50 iTunes gift card. Please note that to be eligible you must be 15-39 and a cancer survivor.
View the video excerpt of Jake's Speech at The Nation's Tri Inspiration Dinner.
- Find out more about First Connection, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's peer-to-peer telephone support program linking patients and their families with a trained volunteer who has experienced a similar situation. (see: http://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org/all_page?item_id=4582)
- Help young adults like Jake by participating in Team In Training (www.teamintraining.org), the worlds first, best and largest endurance sports training program. Our program has helped train more than 420,000 people for endurance sports events (marathons, triathlons, century rides, and hike adventures) over the past 21 years and raised more than $1 billion for life-saving cancer research in the process.