Written by Kristen Palma, TargetCancer Foundation President
Each year, as I sit down to write this note, I wonder what more I can say. It has been 13 years since my husband and our founder, Paul Poth, died after facing cholangiocarcinoma. I am grateful that as time goes by, I think less about the time that Paul was sick, and see how little this particular day matters in comparison to the whole person that he was and the life he lived.
Thanks to Paul’s founding vision, each of us at TargetCancer Foundation is given the opportunity to work with patients, families and caregivers, and to witness the incredible resiliency, creativity, and strength that they find in their most challenging moments. We see patients and caregivers become advocates and medical and scientific experts as they lobby for the best care. They transform themselves into philanthropists, writers, and public speakers, and create powerful support systems, all while finding the unimaginable energy to face a relentless foe.
I watched Paul do all of this when he started TargetCancer Foundation. He was committed to helping other patients with rare cancers be seen, empowered and treated as the whole people that they are, and to be given the best chance to live. All of these years later, with the support of so many of you, we have funded research leading to new treatments, and created the TRACK clinical trial that is fulfilling this mission for rare cancer patients across the country. They are being seen and treated with the dignity that each patient deserves. It is an appropriate legacy for the person that Paul was.