Team Ryan 10th Anniversary T-shirt

Team Ryan returns for our 10th year of participation in St. Jude Memphis Marathon Weekend!!! Can you believe it? This all started when Ryan was a sick little 8 year old girl as a patient at St. Jude, and her mom didn't know what to do with herself, so training for a marathon somehow seemed like a good idea???? Over the years, Ryan herself joined us, and more than 50 different people have participated in the race, raising a combined total of over $200,000.

It costs St. Jude more than $2.4 million per day to run the hospital, because they do extraordinary research, and no family is turned away, regardless of their ability to pay. All of the work of St. Jude is made possible through the work of people like you, who raise $5 at a time, hoping that the money we raise might just lead to that cure that saves the next child. There is an 80% survival rate for patients at St. Jude right now, but that still means that 1 in 5 kids who enter their doors does not survive, like Ryan.

Ryan was diagnosed with Adrenal Cortical Carcinoma (ACC). It affects 1 in 3 million children, and only 20 children in the United States each year. There is no motivation for pharmaceutical companies to create a drug to benefit 20 kids, and no new treatment has been created for this disease in the past 20 years. The survival rate for stage 3 and beyond is 0%. Ryan was diagnosed at stage 4, and beyond all odds, she survived for over three years. St. Jude learned so much from her! They found a genetic mutation that was not previously known to be connected to ACC, and we sincerely hope that other children are benefiting from this. St. Jude still holds pieces of Ryan's tumor to test against new drugs, because they are truly the only institution actively researching this disease.

We have been doing this for a very, very long time, and we know that many of you have donated year after year, but we won’t stop until no child suffers Ryan’s fate. We hope you might consider joining us on this journey or donating to our cause.

Thank you, friends and family, for always standing in our corner, never forgetting our girl, and understanding the importance of continuing to fight this battle.