Pan Mass Challenge

Since 2002, I’ve been riding in the Pan Mass Challenge in honor and memory of my good friend Adam Raskin.  During that time, collectively, all of you who have given so generously have raised over $80,000 to fight childhood cancer, which is incredible.  Thank you for joining me in this effort year after year.  This has become a nice tradition for me, and I hope for a number of you.  

 The PMC, which takes place on Aug 6 and 7, is the number 1 athletic fundraising event in the country – raising over $500 million since 1980, with 100% of donations going to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.  This year’s fundraising? goal is $46 million.  

As I do every year, I’m attaching the 1992 newspaper article about Adam ("On The Other Side of The Nadir Point" - see below).  I re-read it every year.  For me, the sting of reading about his last days, is overshadowed by how inspiring his story continues to be, because of who he was, how his students, players, and colleagues reacted to him, and the way he lived his life.

If you're so inclined, please make a tax-deductible donation to this worthy cause by clicking www.pmc.org, plugging in my name, clicking “donate” and following the prompts.  ("Cohen, Andrew, Northborough, MA"; ID: "AC0110").  

Thank you very much.  – Andy

St. Petersburg Times, June 5, 1992

Times Publishing Company 

SECTION: NATIONAL; COLUMN ONE; Pg. 1A

HEADLINE: On the Other Side of the Nadir Point

BYLINE: BRUCE LOWITT

BODY:

Adam Raskin slipped into the side door of the gymnasium at Tampa Preparatory School. He planned to quietly drop off his uniform before seeking out Susanna Grady, head of the school, and some of his students and fellow teachers.

This was Raskin's first year as a baseball coach and math and physics teacher at Tampa Prep.He didn't know about the tradition on the last day of school the full assembly to honor the senior class. Every student and teacher was present.

One student noticed Raskin, came down from the bleachers and hugged him.  Then another and another, until it was a procession. Mrs. Grady, introducing the seniors, heard the commotion, looked over, then told the assembly, "I have to stop. Mr. Raskin is here."

The applause, the cheers, the hugs and tears of the students and faculty went on and on.  It was as if the family was whole again, as if everything was okay, Mrs. Grady was thinking.

Adam Raskin, 27 but with the face of a teenager, stood uncertainly, his shirt and slacks hanging loosely on his frame, exaggerating the weight loss, his Tampa Prep baseball cap hiding the aftermath of the chemotherapy.

Everyone has dreams. Adam Raskin is no different. He grew up in Pittsfield, Mass., dreaming of the day the Boston Red Sox would be World Series champions, of the day he would play big-league baseball.

Dreams don't always come true. Others come along to take their place.

Raskin was a pretty good pitcher. Scouts told him he had a major-league arm but, at 5 feet 11 and 145 pounds, not the legs, the body to bring the ball at 85 mph. By his senior year in high school, he knew Division III college baseball was as good as he would be. He would go to Tufts, he decided, and pitch for the small-college team.

A month before school began, his academic scholarship to the University of Massachusetts was approved. A full ride, plus $ 100 a month in expenses.  "My dad said, "You're going to UMass.' "

Raskin made the junior varsity, pitched on opening day and "threw a curveball low-outside to the No. 4 batter. He hit it about 430 feet to right. It was like, "Welcome to the big time.' " By midseason he knew he should focus on academics.

On Oct. 25, 1986, in his UMass dorm, Raskin and his classmates watched Game 6 of the World Series.  The Red Sox, leading the Mets 5-3, were one out away from winning their first World Series since 1918.  Raskin held a bottle of champagne in front of the TV set, the wire already off, his thumb keeping the cork in the bottle. What followed was three singles, a wild pitch and a ground ball that rolled through first baseman Bill Buckner's legs. Boston lost 6-5. Raskin retied the wire around the cork.  "I was physically ill. I knew Game 7 was a fait accompli."  Two nights later, the Red Sox lost the World Series.

Raskin was graduated cum laude, a double-major in math and economics. He earned his master's degree from Harvard, and met Myriam Tutoy, who was in hotel restaurant management, then began teaching at Eaglebrook, a prep school about 70 miles from Boston.  Fifteen months ago, after a 1 year long-distance relationship Adam and Myriam married.  They could live in a dorm at Eaglebrook or he could look for work in Boston.

Even educators with doctorates were out of work in Boston. But Tampa Prep happened to have an opening for a math/physics teacher and was looking for a baseball coach.

The headaches began last December, two months after he had started teaching and coaching at Tampa Prep. None of the doctors could find a cause.  Stress, they suggested. Or fatigue.  The headaches got worse. In March, Raskin underwent a CAT scan. It turned up a sinus infection.  That's it, the doctors told him, a sinus infection can cause headaches. He was admitted to Centurion Hospital of Carrollwood to undergo surgery. The blood test, a normal pre-op procedure, was abnormal. A bone-marrow test drilling into the hip for a biopsy was conducted.  Just to rule out worst-case scenarios, the doctors said.

Two days later, Raskin's parents arrived in tears at his room. "I knew that wasn't a good sign," he said.  That's when the doctor told him it was leukemia.

Raskin was transferred to the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa for chemotherapy. "Seven days of chemo followed by a seven-day break," Raskin said, "and then the same thing all over again. You have to have the break.  It takes a while to recover. The blood count goes down to nothing. It wipes out your bone marrow, but that's the objective. Then the bone marrow can regenerate, hopefully without the leukemia."

The residual effects of chemotherapy can be devastating. The liver and kidneys shut down.  Saliva tastes like metal. Headaches and nausea are constant and intense, "like the worst hangover you've ever had, and it won't go away," Raskin said.

In the midst of that, Raskin was given a drug to counteract the nausea. He experienced a neurological reaction.  "I was so on edge, so desperate, like, "This is too much pain. I'm going to die.' Maybe I wanted to die. Maybe I wanted out from all the suffering."

It is called the "nadir point," not only because the blood count is so low and organs are failing, but because the patient has hit rock-bottom emotionally.  "You draw on it," Raskin said. "They're talking about me having bone-marrow transplants. It's not like a kidney operation, where they do it and that's that.  You're in rough shape for two, three months. But I know I've been through the nadir point and have made it, so I know I can do it again."

He sat on the veranda at the rear of his Cove Cay condominium, looking at the water below and the nimbostratus clouds in the distance. Myriam was asleep. Rebecca, his sister, was fixing breakfast for Raskin and a guest.

 "They say it's therapeutic to look at water, that it calms your nerves," he said.  "The pelicans fish in this little estuary. When the mullet run, they're everywhere, hovering and diving."

He paused for a moment.  "You can't stop living. Statistics show that people who stop being positive have less of a chance of survival. Like I tell the kids on the team, "You walk to the plate and tell yourself you're going to hit the hell out of the ball, you've got a better chance of success than if you go up there hoping you won't strike out.' Northside Christian routinely crushes Tampa Prep in baseball. Most teams do. But this year, Prep beat Northside 8-7.

"When I think about how serious leukemia is, about what the chance of recovery is, it's like that game.  I'd written it off, but the kids came back. That makes me think you can come back from anything."

He is home for three weeks. He will be going back to Moffitt soon for more treatments.  He doesn't look far beyond that. He says leukemia has made him live for the moment, to appreciate family, visitors, phone calls, the pelicans diving outside his window.

"I don't look more than a few days down the road now. It doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense.  It seems like the last five or six years rushed by "Got to get through college, through grad school, get a job, get furniture.'  Things happen for a reason. I've gotten the message that I need to slow down.

"This isn't the Lou Gehrig Story here. I mean, I feel ripped off.  I'm too young for this. But it's also made me thankful for what I've had."

Raskin's life is an amalgam of hopes and fears. Lots of fears.

He wants a son. "I love my dad. He was a great role model. But he wasn't an athlete.  He didn't have the love of sports I have. I want to have a son and expose him to these things.  He may end up a concert violinist and have no love of baseball, but that's okay.  I want to have a son and be a father to him in a way that my father wasn't to me."

He may not get the chance to father a child. With the chemotherapy he has had and will need, sterility is a serious possibility. He also thinks about having a son and not being around to see him grow up.

He said his doctors have hinted that these few weeks at home may be his last few weeks at home. He will have to undergo more of the same chemotherapy and probably a bone-marrow transplant. Some people don't make it through the kind of treatment he'll experience.

"Maybe this is some sort of reward," he said. "Some people don't go home for three weeks. I'm home.

"You try not to get your hopes up." Raskin laughed, reflecting on the curse Boston's baseball fans have endured for 74 years.  "Like you learn not to get your hopes up about the Red Sox," he said. "It doesn't make sense.  History tells you that. But you do, of course. Every year.

"You hear a piece of good news, or you start to feel good, and you get your hopes up. The Sox, they win three in a row and we start talking about a pennant drive. It's natural. With the Sox, of course, they pull at your heart every year and they end up ripping it out. Even though the Sox haven't won in so long, you know it's possible.

The odds may be against them based on the past. The same way the odds may be against me."

He has read a lot about leukemia, has sought out different physicians' opinions. "If I'd had this disease 10, 15 years ago, I'd be dead right now.  Advances in science have given me a fighting chance. But not a 98 percent chance. It's hard to put numbers to anything.

They say 20 percent of all patients with my type of leukemia have a prolonged remission. They rarely say "cure.' But what does 20 percent mean 20 percent of men between 20 and 30? No, it means infants, 85-year-olds. In many ways, it's probably a coin toss.

 "Look, even if they said every person ever diagnosed with this type of illness has died, that doesn't mean the next one's going to die.  You can't say the Sox are never going to win a World Series. Some day they're going to win it all. That possibility exists."

He thought for an instant. "It's probably a stronger possibility that I'm going to come through this thing fine."

Raskin gave a whimsical giggle, propped his feet on the table in front of him and took a bite of his bagel.

"The possibility of survival, of victory, always exists. I don't care if Tampa Prep's going up against the Red Sox.  They have a chance. Maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but if there's a metaphor for life, it's there."

GRAPHIC: COLOR PHOTO, JIM STEM; Adam Raskin

LOAD-DATE: November 3, 1992