LiveStrong Global Cancer Summit

Day one of the Summit. I couldn't help but think about the first time we went to Austin TX several years ago and first met Lance and the staff of the Lance Armstrong Foundation. It was a small but passionate group, basically putting on a bike ride to raise some money. I think it was the first year the foundation had raised over one million dollars. I won't say the exact words that Lance used when he heard the total, but let's just say he was pleasantly surprised, actually overwhelmed. This was still years before LiveStrong or a yellow band existed. There was something about this group of folks that we wanted, maybe even needed to be a part of. They were going to make something happen and we wanted to help. Now, just twelve years after Lance was diagnosed, we're holding a Global Cancer Summit with 65 countries and over 500 delegates from around the world. There are a lot of groups, companies and even countries behind that success, but ultimately it comes down to the people that have been affected by cancer.

Host country, Ireland's flag

The Summit began with an Olympic like entrance of the participating countries flags. Lance and CEO Doug Ulman got us started and we had a day filled with several small panel discussions of world cancer issues. I'm quite sure that we, speaking as an American forget how other parts of the world deal with issues and with cancer becoming the number one cause of death globally by next year, it's an issue that we all deal with.

Dr Sanjay Gupta of CNN led a panel discussion.

What turned out to be one of the best presentations was on tobacco. Frightening statistics. I know it's a horribly addictive drug and many kids get addicted when they are young, then have great difficulty in quitting smoking or other forms of use. I wish I had the picture of the 4 or 5 year old child smoking a cigarette. Sorry I can't remember the country of origin, but it was hard to comprehend how someone would buy cigarettes and teach a small child how to smoke.

The day moved smooth and quick and we had a break before returning to dinner at the Royal Dublin Society, just a few blocks from the hotel. Dinner was great and we met and made more new friends. Even though it was a rather long day, it seems the rowdy crew always finds itself and we made our first stop after dinner at the first pub from the RDS. Several of our CCC friends(Cycling Combatting Cancer), some LAF staff and some new friends that we connected with all gathered. After the bartender finally gave us the boot and closed, we moved to our hotel pub. A few folks beat us there and were able to get a Guinness, but they closed before we all made it. No worries as there was a beer machine in the hotel, so we worked on that for another hour or so before everyone agreed we should get some sleep for another important day.