Seventy-one-year-old Chuck Wakefield was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2003. Since then the Grapevine, Texas, resident has had a bone-marrow transplant, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, and is now cycling from Los Angeles, California, to Fairfield, Connecticut. That’s 3,400 miles, if anyone’s counting.
Beyond his general love of exercise and how thankful he feels every day for his capable body, Chuck’s ride across the United States has a very clear purpose: to raise money for cancer research. “Multiple Myeloma is the second most common blood cancer in the United States behind lymphoma and leukemia”When you’re diagnosed it is incurable, but the survivability is great—especially as we put more research into it. The key to funding is donations, which is why we’re doing this bike ride—it’s for cancer research. There’s a team of six of us riding across the country. Everyone on the team has a connection to multiple myeloma, but I’m the only one living with it.”
