Gabriele Grunewald, a U.S. champion in the indoor 3,000 meters, learned last week that her fourth bout of cancer isn’t responding to chemotherapy. In fact, she said, the tumors on her liver have grown and new ones have also appeared.
The next step for the Minneapolis-based athlete is an immunotherapy trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York. The travel and medical expenses, however, are quickly adding up. In a show of support, her friends, family, and fans have started raising funds to help offset the costs. The campaign began on Monday seeking to raise $50,000. By 10 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, 356 donors had given nearly $24,000.
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Any funds raised that Grunewald, 31, doesn’t use will be donated to the Cure Cancer Run Club, a foundation that she wants to start in an effort to support cancer causes through organized running events.
Through her four bouts of cancer, first as an NCAA middle-distance runner, Grunewald has continued to compete at a high level, most recently at the U.S. championships in June in Sacramento, California. She finished last in her heat of the 1500 meters in 4:31.18 and didn’t advance to the final, but she also didn’t expect to—she was in between rounds of chemo at the time. She received an ovation from the spectators and an emotional group hug at the finish line from her competitors.
Grunewald has been public about the roller coaster of living with cancer. She posted on Instagram last week that, in what has become her prevailing attitude, she will keep seeking solutions.
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“It’s exhausting. But it’s essential. If you have metastatic cancer you are living life on the edge, praying for a breakthrough,” she wrote. “On the road to finding a treatment that works for you, you’re probably going to fail a treatment (or quite a few treatments!) along the way. That doesn’t mean you’re out of the race. You just have to brush yourself off and keep running.”
Friends and supporters of Grunewald are encouraging others to use the hashtag #BraveLikeGabe to express how her fight and transparency has inspired many other people over the past eight years.
