Max Celebrates LIVESTRONG DAY 10/2
By Max Papis Racing | October 2, 2009 at 3:37 pm10/2 for many means everything, for others means nothing.
For me it means fight fight fight, don’t accept the obvious, never give up, family, Cesare, LAF, Cancer, and LIFE.
In December 9, 2006 pancreatic cancer robbed me of my dad Cesare. Few years before I attended the LAF Ride of the Roses in Austin TX as a Lance supporter and I had no idea that Cancer would have touch my life shortly after that.
We are a simple family that has routes in the north side of Italy in a small village of 1000 souls; Barasso, in the province of Varese, and my story is quite different.
You might ask yourself what the heck this guy is writing to us for? My answer is: It is 100% POSSIBLE; that in my case means coming from nowhere to arrive and drive F1, Indycar, Le Mans, Prototype, Daytona 24 H and now NASCAR. All of this has been possible because of what my dad Cesare taught me, that is never give in and never give up.
Life is full of opportunity to show what you are made of and I was lucky to get to do something that many people can only dream of, but it happen because I always believed it was possible and I fought for it like my Dad fought against a prognosis that gave him 3 months and instead he stayed with us 18 months, during which I had my first child Marco. Unfortunately, as he was sick, he could not travel to the US to see him, so he patiently waited between chemo and other treatments to see my son. For the occasion, we organized Marco’s Baptism in Italy and I invited all his friends and all the people that got to know him, and we had a local Chef preparing his favorite dishes. He was too weak to come to church to attend, but he waited at home and there he met all his friends and he proudly held Marco in his hands from time to time, even kissing him, something really rare from a 6 ft 3 man that looked like he came out of the Roman Empire. A week after that he passed away.
I’m sharing with you this story to tell you how much he taught me in my life, how special he is, and how undefeated he was even when he lost over 50% of his body weight. During the LIVESTRONG Day we have a chance to remind people that we all need to fight to help curing this disease. It is possible to find a cure, and I will fight to try to create as much awareness as possible in order to get to the point where we will look back and say…”it was a bad disease but we kick it in the butt and now it is gone.”
I will fight to make sure that we can win this race, and that people like my dad Cesare, like Lance Armstrong, and many other that maybe we will never know, but they fought and are fighting their battle against cancer, will have their WIN because I believe it is 100% POSSIBLE and WE WILL MAKE IT HAPPEN.
From the NASCAR SPRINT CUP Series track at Kansas
LIVESTRONG
Max Papis
