HOLLISTON, Mass. — Music filled a recent fundraiser in Holliston for a cause that has become deeply personal for Bob McKee. The Holliston husband and father is preparing to join thousands of walkers Sunday, Oct. 4, at the Jimmy Fund Walk for Dana-Farber, after a cancer diagnosis brought his family’s everyday life to a sudden stop.
McKee said his ordeal began in the summer of 2023, when he felt “desperately exhausted” and spent three months undergoing tests without answers. A brain MRI finally revealed lesions and signs of metastatic cancer.
“You see lesions, you see brain, you see the “M” word as pretty much a death sentence most of the time,” McKee said. “So I didn’t know what to do. I was pretty paralyzed.”
Additional testing showed no cancer elsewhere in his body. Surgery and a biopsy led to a diagnosis of central nervous system or CNS lymphoma. McKee then underwent aggressive chemotherapy, followed by stem cell treatment.
The first phase required repeated hospital stays of several days at a time. McKee said that treatment eliminated the tumors, but it was only half the battle. The next phase kept him in the hospital for 35 consecutive days as he received more intensive chemotherapy before his stem cells were returned to his body.
“It was terrible,” he said. “That’s when I lost the hair; that’s when I was on pain meds. But whatever, it was light at the end of the tunnel.”
Family, music and messages of support
The diagnosis affected the entire McKee family. His wife, Christina, said their son, James, had just started kindergarten when treatment began.
“It was kind of like our world just stopped,” Christina McKee said. As a nurse practitioner, she said her medical background helped her navigate the health care system while she tried to keep life as normal as possible for their son. Family members and friends helped while she trusted Bob’s Dana-Farber care team to guide his treatment.
During the hardest days, McKee found encouragement in music. He built a playlist of inspirational songs, including Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song,” and listened to it while hospitalized.
Sharing his story and giving back
Rather than put cancer entirely behind him, McKee began sharing updates online. He said the response to his first LinkedIn post was overwhelming, including messages from strangers who said his openness gave them strength in their own situations. That response inspired him to create Bob Battles Cancer, also known as BBC23 for the year he was diagnosed. The site brings together his story, the music that helped him, and video conversations with patients, survivors, musicians, and people involved in cancer research and care.
For McKee, “battle” is not a judgment about anyone else’s experience with cancer. He said it describes his commitment to confront the disease in several ways: raising money, encouraging research, and giving people a place to tell their stories. He also formed a Walk Day team, now called the BBC23 Underdogs. The team raised more than $10,000 in its first year walking. McKee said the underdog identity reflects the persistence that carried him through treatment and now fuels his effort to use what he calls a second chance to help others.
McKee leaned on music once again in September, when he held a team fundraiser featuring a performance by former “Voice” contestant Sam James at Rushford and Sons Brewhouse in Holliston.
Walking together, McKee said he is looking forward to walking with Christina and seeing thousands of people moving toward the same goal, even though each has a different reason for being there.
For Christina, the event carries an especially powerful reminder of how far her husband has come. During their first walk, she passed beneath a bridge connecting Dana-Farber and Brigham and Women’s Hospital—the same bridge she had crossed after leaving Bob during his treatments.
“I started crying because to know how far he has come along is just amazing,” she said. “To be able to help others and give back is huge.”
Boston 25 News is a media partner of the Jimmy Fund Walk for Dana-Farber. If you’d like to support McKee’s team, CLICK HERE TO DONATE.
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