For a long time, I struggled to find a purpose in life – then one major event changed my whole life. In December 2017, within a few months of our daughter’s birth and both of our 30th birthdays, my husband was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. During what was supposed to be one of the happiest times of our lives as first-time parents, it felt like we got the wind knocked out of our sails.
Luckily, cancer research is a field that has made remarkable progress over the past 2 decades – treatments that exist today did not exist a few years ago. Dan’s form of lung cancer had an ALK mutation, a rare form of the disease that had several targeted treatments available. Did you know that for lung cancer in particular, there are several oral therapies that target cancer cells and provide life expectancies many years beyond traditional therapy?! I didn’t – I had no idea about anything beyond chemotherapy until I started diving into the world of cancer treatments and developed a great appreciation for cancer research and the medical advancements that we’ve been able to achieve in recent years.
Since then, I knew that my purpose was to help find a cure – I just didn’t quite know how. What I did know was that we loved to travel. Before diagnosis, we traveled around the world – from Denmark to Thailand to the Maldives – exploring the world was one of our favorite things to do together. Naturally, after his diagnosis we started to cross off more destinations from the bucket list and have been to at least one new destination every year since.
Then one day it hit me – what if I combined our love for travel with purpose? I could be a catalyst for positive change if I donated a portion of each trip booked toward cancer research – I could fuel the fire for the already tremendous effort that is being placed into cancer research and make a difference in not just our lives, but the lives of so many other families that cancer impacts everyday. That is how the concept for Traveling for Tomorrow was born!
To learn more about Dan’s journey, visit danfightscancer.com
Traveling for Tomorrow 