Tomorrow, Saturday, is Bladder Cancer Awareness Day across the country. Being diagnosed with bladder cancer myself and then having a recurrence has certainly raised my awareness of this disease. I've worked with several organizations in the past few years and one those organizations is BCAN. BCAN, the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network, is based out of Bethesda, Maryland. I remember when Diane Zipursky Quale and her husband, John Quale, founded BCAN 6 years ago in May of 2005. John was a well known Washington DC communications attorney and certainly no stranger to my business. And although John was a bladder cancer survivor and relatively young when BCAN was started back in 2005,, he has since died of this disease. Like many diagnosed with bladder cancer, (this disease has as high as a 90% recurrence rate), John was "clear" for a period of time and then things, as they often do with bladder cancer, went from bad to worse. By "clear", I mean to say that John was what is referred to these days as NED...no evidence of disease. Tomorrow, Saturday, hundreds of survivors and supporters will walk to raise awareness and funds for bladder cancer. More than 40 walks across 24 different states are taking place tomorrow in celebration of Bladder Cancer Awareness Day. Events like this are so important in helping BCAN (pronounced like "beacon") reach even more of the 600,000 bladder cancer survivors in the United States and in raising the profile of bladder cancer to attract the level of public interest and research funding that it deserves. We are all working together to make a real difference in drawing attention and resources towards this under-funded and under-recognized disease. Like a friend of mine who's also dealing with bladder cancer these days, "we're all on the same ship and the ship is sinking"! For more information on bladder cancer, feel free to contact me, The Puffman, or bcan.org.

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