Dream New Dreams (27 page)

In the end, I decided this offer was an opportunity I didn’t want to pass up. Maybe I wouldn’t be doing something as tangible as handing out food, but I would be playing a similar role on a larger scale. I liked becoming part of a team whose goals aligned with mine. It would give me opportunities to meet other people affected by pancreatic cancer who wanted to do something about the disease. Even though there is only a 10 percent chance of inheriting pancreatic cancer, I didn’t like to think about my children being afflicted with the disease that killed their father, especially when the survival rate hasn’t changed in forty years. What hope would medical science have to offer to my children at this pace of discovery? How would I feel if I hadn’t done all that I could to change the landscape of this disease?

As these ideas swirled around in my head, I thought about Randy. He never encouraged me to continue his crusade. His actions, though, spoke volumes. When he was in the hospital for congestive heart failure and kidney failure in March 2008, he told the doctors he needed to be released in time to go to Washington, D.C., to testify in front of Congress and advocate for greater funding for the National Cancer Institute and for pancreatic cancer. The doctors did release him, even though we were still trying to get his blood pressure down from 200/100. Randy was in a lot of discomfort, and he was very weak. Just watch the video of his testimony filmed by Geoff Martz of ABC News. You can see Randy grab his sides and grimace in pain. Nevertheless, he willed himself to get dressed and suffer the four-hour drive, resting in the back of the car.

Back in August 2007, Randy’s doctors told him he would most likely not be alive after six months—in other words in March 2008. He told Diane Sawyer during an interview for an hour-long
20/20
television special in April 2008 that he didn’t expect to be alive on Father’s Day in June. He knew he was living on borrowed time. His decision to take another day away from his children after just having spent five days in the hospital where he didn’t see them at all underscores how important it was to him to try to make a difference. Moreover, Randy knew that his efforts would not benefit himself in the least—it was too late for that. He went anyway, and I think he hoped not only to bring attention to pancreatic cancer, but to rally the public and our government to action—to get behind the medical researchers and give them the tools they need to find a cure. Short of this goal, he hoped to inspire others to pick up the baton and run the race that he couldn’t finish. In a public service announcement he made, Randy said, “In all likelihood, cancer is going to defeat my body, but it’s not going to defeat my soul because the human spirit is much more powerful than any biological disease.” In light of his actions and words, how could I not pick up the baton and carry on in that spirit?

I accepted the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network’s offer to join their board of directors. It is a decision I have not regretted. Because the organization has a comprehensive approach to attacking the disease, I have learned a lot—from the business of running a nonprofit to the art of marshaling volunteers. Being on the board doesn’t mean sitting around a conference table looking at a stack of reports. Board members are active at the grassroots level. I have participated in organized community walks, raising awareness about the disease among the general public as well as raising funding. I’ve tried to include my children at events or activities when it’s been appropriate,
so we can be together as a family and learn through example and action what it means to give back to our community.

In addition to community events, I’ve done a lot of public speaking. These invitations have challenged me to develop a skill set that I didn’t have before joining the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. Before the birth of the children, I’d been a webmaster; I never set foot on a stage or picked up a microphone. As a graduate student at the University of North Carolina, I was nervous when I had to present a paper to my classmates and professor—about fifteen people. Now I walk onto a stage and address two thousand people but don’t experience stage fright. My friends have asked me how I can stand in front of such a large group of people and keep my composure. It’s because I really believe in what I’m doing. I have complete conviction that we as a society need to do more to help scientists make headway against this difficult and deadly disease. What Randy and I experienced was horrendous to both of us and to our families in ways that were unprecedented for us all. Talking about it helps me move forward. I hope that sharing my experience will cause others to identify with us and not feel so isolated going through their own journeys, and that they will in turn help my cause. I feel that some good has to come from the painful experience of Randy’s battle with cancer and from our loss. This is the true silver lining—helping others while helping myself.

The more challenging aspect has been the business side of the nonprofit organization. As a board member, I am charged with ensuring the fiscal responsibility of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, which translates into making sure that any and all monies donated to the organization go toward its mission—curing pancreatic cancer. Luckily for me, the organization’s accounting is transparent and well documented, making my job so much easier.
It’s been a real eye-opener to see how a well-managed nonprofit is always trying to keep costs down and use its funds to the best advantage toward its goals. The position has made me think in ways I’ve never had to do before.

As I have continued my involvement in the pancreatic cancer community, I’ve had the privilege of meeting some super people working tirelessly to bring about a cure. One in particular who stands out as a role model for me is Roger Magowitz. I met Roger at a Pancreatic Cancer Action Network gala fund-raiser in October 2008. He offered me his business card and told me to call him if I ever needed a mattress (which I did!). At the time, Roger owned twenty mattress stores in Arizona and fifteen in Virginia. He and his wife, Jeanne, live not far from me in Virginia Beach, and we’ve become friends. I didn’t know it at the time, but Roger had added me to his immense list of friends and contacts. Roger is a people maven, fitting Malcolm Gladwell’s definition to a T. He has a vast network of friends through which he meets others or can get to know someone outside his own network through various degrees of separation. Roger uses his talent to help bring about a cure for pancreatic cancer because the disease took his own mother eight years earlier. Instead of remaining bitter, Roger channeled his energies and emotions into a full frontal assault on the disease. First, he volunteered to help organize a golf tournament to raise funds for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, which netted $10,000. The following year, he suggested to the organizer that the tournament be named after his mother, Seena Magowitz. Through his efforts and networking, the tournament raised $50,000 that year! When the organizer wanted to change the tournament’s name each year to honor a different person, Roger knew his friends wouldn’t come out as they had before, so he decided to go off on his own and
start his own golf fund-raiser in his mother’s honor. His network of friends and supporters followed him. The golf classic has grown both in the number of attendees (four hundred in 2010) and in dollars ($2.5 million in 2010). I am amazed at his success and determination, born of a desire to extinguish the disease that devastated his family when it took his mother’s life.

The golf tournament isn’t the only project Roger has undertaken in his quest to help conquer pancreatic cancer. He has galvanized his industry to implement some creative ideas. Roger initiated the novel idea of making teddy bears out of Tempur-Pedic’s space-age foam and donating the proceeds to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. He also committed to purchase a percentage of the bears for his stores in Virginia. Roger’s idea helped launch the “Hugs Back” campaign, in which Tempur-Pedic used those squeezable, huggable bears to raise awareness about pancreatic cancer through its marketing, advertising, and public relations. The company advertised the bears and the cause they represented in national and local magazines and newspaper print ads, along with television and radio spots, selling the bears for a modest amount at bedding stores across the country. By the end of December 2010, Tempur-Pedic’s campaign had generated $300,000 for pancreatic cancer research, all because Roger challenged the bedding industry to care, and these corporate giants rose to the challenge.

When I talked to him about how he was able to manage a company in two different states while still volunteering his time to pancreatic cancer projects, Roger explained that he had been in the business for more than twenty years with an excellent staff in place to help to keep his business running. He never lost sight of the fact that his mother had died without hope of treatment or cure, and he was willing to put in 110 percent every day. When his friends
and colleagues saw what he gave of his time, money, and resources to this cause, they were more willing to get involved. When Roger decided to sell his company, he chose a buyer that agreed to make pancreatic cancer research funding its corporate charity. Mattress Firm not only bought Roger’s company; they also hired him to keep doing what he had already been doing all these years without compensation—fight pancreatic cancer. Moreover, Roger and his wife, Jeanne, pledged $1 million to the Translational Genomics Research Institute’s physician-in-chief, Dr. Daniel Von Hoff, to underwrite his clinical trials so that treatment options make it from the medical research lab to the patient much faster. They could have chosen to buy a retirement home in Florida and play golf every day, and felt they had done their part. Instead, they led by example and tangibly showed that ending pancreatic cancer and helping others was a priority in their lives.

Because of people like Roger and Jeanne, I’m beginning to make choices about what is important to me and my family. I’ve had to ask myself how I want to handle the experience I went through with Randy. Do I want to bury it deep inside me and let time slowly repair that wound, or do I want to embrace my tragedy and use it to make something positive? At the same time, I don’t want to be handcuffed to the past or defined by it. The next challenge I face is to learn how to take my experiences from the past and use them to make a difference in the world today without letting the past dictate my future. I don’t want to be “Randy’s widow,” but just Jai Pausch. Somehow I must find a way to take the broken pieces of my dreams from yesterday and use them to create something new and beautiful that fits who I am today.

R
ECENTLY I WAS ASKED
to introduce Roger Magowitz at a Translational Genomics Research Institute founders dinner. I was looking forward to telling the guests about Roger’s efforts and about the innovative work he helps fund: the pancreatic cancer research led by Dr. Daniel Von Hoff at TGen. As I looked around the room, my eyes fell upon a familiar face.
Where do I know him from?
I asked myself as I went through my talk. Then it dawned on me! That face belonged to Dan Quayle. Here was a former vice president of the United States sitting at the table just to my right, looking up at me and listening to what I had to say. Never in a million years would I ever have imagined myself in a position to have a vice president, former or present, listen attentively to me. What an incredible night that was. Later on, I thought about what I had experienced and what it meant. My take-home message is that even though I may not know what my future holds, I should not give in to the fear of the unknown. I have to trust. I have to have faith that
my life will continue to have exciting and magical times. I just have to keep myself open to the possibilities.

Starting over is something we all do at various times throughout our lives for many different reasons, like divorcing or losing a job. Closing a chapter in life naturally creates fear and anxiety. In an interview with
O
magazine, Oprah Winfrey spoke very candidly about starting a new phase in her life after ending
The Oprah Winfrey Show
. Winfrey describes her pep talk to herself like this: “
Here you are, in bed, afraid of making the next move and look at where you are
[in her Maui home overlooking the water].…
Look at where you have been brought from
. I started thinking about my little house in Mississippi, and I started to cry. I thought,
Look at all the times when God didn’t leave you alone
. And I thought,
Okay, okay: God is not going to give me this opportunity and just leave me alone—why would I be put in this position, just to fail?
” Oprah didn’t remain chained to her successful show, nor did she let anxiety about the future paralyze her from taking the next step. She owned that fear, harnessed its energy, and used it to create a new dream: a network dedicated to her own television programming.

I’m also beginning a new phase of my life and choosing not to be trapped by my past. I need to reinvent myself, adapt to the new circumstances I find myself in, and most important, grow. One of the greatest life lessons I’ve learned has been to dream new dreams. When a dream is fulfilled, it shouldn’t become a straitjacket, constricting a person’s evolution and progress. Instead, it should be a stepping-stone to the next thing. When a dream shatters, you should pick up the pieces and create a new one. It won’t be the same as the broken one, but you can hope it will be as vibrant and as exciting. I’ve had to give myself permission to let go of old dreams—I’m not going to raise my children with the man I married on May 20, 2000,
under the shade of two giant oak trees. That dream died with Randy, and now the shards lie about my feet. Nor can I continue to be tied to that moment in my life. What good would it do for Randy or my children if I stayed a grieving widow? What kind of example would I be for my children? Isn’t it so much more healthy to move forward with the lessons I’ve learned, to heal my wounds and to continue to live my life? I remind myself of today’s possibilities instead of yesterday’s disappointments. I’ve created a new mantra: Dream new dreams.