Mother cycles through Dayton on race across US to honor daughter who died from rare cancer

Schaenzle went from Swift Run Lake in north of Piqua to Trek Bicycle at Wilmington Pike in Dayton on Tuesday. She had set out with her husband from Evergreen, Colorado, for Cincinnati, and the start of an estimated 1,000-mile bike ride through Ohio, Ontario, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland,

In December 2016, Schaenzle had an epiphany and told her 20-year-old daughter Anna Rose — who suffered from a rare cancer known as NETs — that she wanted to run in 50 national parks.

She asked her daughter to be her “support vehicle driver once she’d recovered and felt up to it,” but Anna Rose declined, saying “she wanted to run with her mom instead.”

Her daughter died three months later on March 26, 2017. In November 2017, Schaenzle began a nine-month journey in honor of her daughter. Since then, she “crossed her personal finish line in Rocky Mountain National Park, having traveled 42,000 miles to walk, run and paddle 350 miles in 51 national parks, at 12 national monuments and two national preserves,” according to a news release.

Five years later, in fall 2023, she began mapping out a new adventure — cycling along historic canals in the eastern U.S., from Ohio to Washington, D.C. She would do this in Anna Rose’s memory but also to raise awareness of NET cancers and funds for the Nashville-based Healing NET Foundation and as encouragement to all NET patients courageously fighting such an insidious disease.

For just over a month, the Schaenzles will be cooking, bathing and sleeping in their van, nicknamed “Hope,” along with Anna Rose’s beloved bear “Teddy” (that traveled to all the national parks during the first campaign) for this ride, too, in a handlebar bag on her bike.

“The first campaign was spiritual … to honor Anna Rose and the trip we had planned, to share her cancer journey and encourage other NET patients and their families,” Schaenzle said. “This one also pays tribute to her—the courage she showed and the bravery of others like her—but crucially, we want to bring greater awareness to a cancer that is still misdiagnosed.”

Schaenzle’s efforts are supported by The Healing NET Foundation, a national nonprofit, whose mission is to optimize the care of those with neuroendocrine cancer through education and collaboration among physicians, health care providers, patients and caregivers.

“We need doctors to think NETs when patients present with symptoms that may initially seem to be caused by something else,” Mia S. Tepper, MBA, executive director of The Healing NET Foundation, said. “The key to this disease is the right treatment by the right team at the right time.”

As NET cancer is a rare disease, patients can have a difficult time finding doctors well-versed in their diagnosis so the foundation in collaboration with experts in the field, have identified a need to expand the number of physicians with knowledge of NET care, both to meet the demand of a growing patient population and to replace retiring doctors.

“I would love to take every NET patient and every person who has passed from NET cancer with me on every mile of the trail,” she said.