I had to change the title of my blog today. Had to change it from Sixteen Years Of Pink to Seventeen Years of Pink. Any guess how come? You betcha, one more pink ribbon has been added to my Survivor cap!Seventeen years... that's crazy, right? I have been fighting breast cancer for one third of my life.
Wowza!
Coincidentally, I am giving a speech tomorrow at the opening ceremonies for the Komen CT Race For the Cure. The Race is always held the first weekend in June, so I have enjoyed being in the company of thousands of people celebrating breast cancer survivors and raising money to help find a cure, on the anniversary of my survivorshop. A big, pink party just for me! Well, not really..
I remember my first Race for the Cure. At that time, it was held in another town and in May. At the Race, each survivor receives a pink hat and a pink ribbon is placed on the brim of the cap to represent how many years of survivorship she has. I received just a cap; no pink ribbons for me...yet.
I remember looking around the park and taking a mental inventory of the number of pink ribbons on the caps. Lots of brand new survivors, with one or two ribbons and large numbers of women with three to ten ribbons. It then began to get a bit harder to find the women with lots of ribbons, the women with fifteen and greater years of survival. But they were there, just not as many as I would have liked to have seen. Occassionally, I would see the remarkable woman whose brim was overflowing with ribbons and my heart would swell. "Oh God, please let me be one of those women"!
That first race for me, in 1999, I was just an observer of the 5k race. In January, 2000, after all of my chemo had been completed, I underwent a bilateral mastectomy. In March of that same year, I decided that I wanted to run in the Race For the Cure instead of just watching. One small thing stood in the way of me crossing the finish line: I wasn't a runner.
I grabbed my sneakers (used for gardening) and began running. Very slow. I ran while Tessa was at preschool, pushing a jog stroller that I borrowed from a friend, with Torrie bucled in. There was no magic formula with my running, I basically just ran farther than I did the day before. I found out what the actual course layout was and would haul Torrie, the jog stroller and myself out to the streets and run. Very slow. Two days prior to the Race, I still had not run 3.1 miles. I was praying that adrenaline would kick in on race day and help me cross the finish line. Unbelieveably, my strategy worked. And more unbelievably, I finished in less than 30 minutes; a lofty goal for someone post surgery that had only been running for 8 weeks!
I was just tickled pink with myself - tee hee! But what happened next was really going to shake up my life. At the Survivor Breakfast, there were several gifts that were to be given away via raffle.
Among them, was an all-expense paid, 4 day trip to Washington, DC to participate in the National Race For the Cure, and attend a party at Vice President Gore's home. Bet you can't guess who won?!
Um hmm. So what turned out to be a one-time running event, became two. The next month, I was running down the Mall.. and my time was 26:30.
So with three months of running under my belt, I made big decision: I was going to run a Marathon. The Walt Disney Marathon. In January. Six and a half months away. Stop laughing.
So I kept my fool proof training formula the same, just run farther and farther. Seriously, I did do some research and came up with a good plan to achieve a solid base, and alternate short and long run days. I had a blast training. I had such a sense of accomplishment each week, because I was getting stronger, running faster and running farther. In January, 2001, I completed my first marathon.
And my last.
Since that first Race For The Cure in 2000, I have always
In short, I have had a ball being a breast cancer survivor and being associated with Komen.
And tomorrow morning...
the brim of my cap will be filled pink ribbons!
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