In November 2024, at 31, my wife Lauren was diagnosed with stage 2 triple negative breast cancer, one of the most aggressive forms. Then came the second blow: a separate hormone receptor-positive cancer in the other breast. Two different cancers at once.

Before any of it, she was dismissed. She raised the concern and was told it was probably nothing. She pushed anyway. She was right, and we were lucky enough to get her into Memorial Sloan Kettering, where she was finally taken seriously.

What followed at MSK: six months of chemotherapy infusions, then six more months of oral chemotherapy. A double mastectomy. A salpingectomy. She learned she carries a BRCA mutation, which means the risk was never just one diagnosis. She’s still on hormone therapy today.

Lauren didn’t go quiet. She became an advocate for early detection, for genetic testing, for other people going through it right now. And she founded Laklak, her own non-toxic cosmetics brand, because after everything she’d been through she wasn’t willing to stop asking what’s actually in the things we put on our bodies.

On November 1, 2026, I’ll run the TCS New York City Marathon with Fred’s Team, MSK’s official running program. I’m not a lifelong runner, and as a dad I train at 5am on a herniated disc, because the discomfort I’m choosing is nothing next to what she didn’t get to choose.

I watched her oncologists, surgeons, infusion nurses, and researchers do the hardest work there is, mostly without recognition, on the worst day of somebody’s life. Nobody claps for them at a finish line. This run is partly for them.

Fred’s Team sends 100% of every dollar directly into MSK labs. Not overhead. Research.

My goal is $6,500, about $250 a mile. Every donation is tax-deductible.

I’ll be thinking about Lauren at mile 20 when it gets ugly, and about everyone who was told it was probably nothing.

Help me make those miles count.
Elio