Just 8% of all people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer will survive for five or more years, and Bill Shrieves of McDaniel, MD is one of them.
Shrieves just celebrated his 70th birthday and will soon mark his sixth year as a pancreatic cancer survivor, so to say that his odds are better than most is an understatement. Some might take those odds for a whirl in Vegas, but this local septuagenarian is taking them to Washington D.C. instead and, on Oct. 30, will run the 26.2-mile Marine Corps Marathon to raise funds to help others fight the same disease.
“It’s probably also some kind of late-life crisis,” jokes Shrieves, who ran the same race 13 years ago—well before his battle with pancreatic cancer.
“Really, I just want to see if I can do it again, and I’m hoping that people will cheer me on by making a donation,” he says. “Half of all donations will go to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network to support their national fight, and half will go to the Mid-Shore Pancreatic Cancer Foundation to support members of our own community who have the diagnosis.”
Pancreatic cancer is now the third-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. An estimated 53,700 Americans will be diagnosed with the disease in 2016 alone, and 41,780 will die—most within the first 5-7 months of their illness.
Shrieves has been a member of the St. Michaels Rotary for 17 years. He is a Past President of the club and a Paul Harris Fellow, which recognizes his personal contributions of more than $1,000 The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International.
Tax-deductible donations can be made to Shrieves’s cause on the Mid-Shore Pancreatic Cancer Foundation website at https://www.midshorepancan.org/event/marine-corps-marathon-celebration-run/, and donors can track his race progress live athttps://results.xacte.com/maptrack/mcm2016/. Shrieves’s bib number is 27479.
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