UPDATE: The Survivors’ Lap (with Special Men's Bra Contest)

     The Marin Independent Journal (IJ) ran a story of mine this past Tuesday, July 26. It’s in the “How It Is” column, and it illustrates how fleeting the joy of having survived cancer can be. In the article, I lament the fact that there was no survivors’ ceremony at the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides walk last year.

Imagine my surprise when the chairwoman for Relay For Life in Novato, Marin County, called me after she read my story.

“I want to invite you to run in the survivors’ lap at our event this Saturday,” she said, “and join us for breakfast afterward.” I was touched that she would ask.*

     The emcee for last year’s Making Strides event called me, too. He saw the Marin IJ story and reminded me that this year’s event is on Aug. 6 in Mill Valley. We talked about all the walking and running going on. It’s part of raising funds for research. I mentioned that it seemed to me there were too many disparate programs going after a limited pool of dollars.

The emcee, whose name is Gerard Bourguignon, told me his wife is involved with cancer research in San Francisco. He said communication between research teams has gotten very good, and that there is much more coordination of effort.

That’s terrific news because I’m hoping to add to the pool of research funds with proceeds from my book, Nothing Can Scare Me Now: Managing Breast Cancer So It Doesn’t Manage You. It will be available on Amazon.com in August.

     I learned plenty in researching my book. For example, did you know?:

• Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer worldwide and the leading cause of cancer death among women. It accounts for 23% of the total cancer cases and 14% of the cancer deaths. Source: American Cancer Society.

• Approximately 70-80% of breast cancers occur in women who have no family history of breast cancer. These occur due to genetic abnormalities that happen as a result of the aging process and life in general. Source: breastcancer.org.

• About 5-10% of breast cancers can be linked to gene mutations (abnormal changes) inherited from one’s mother or father. Mutations of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are the most common. Source: American Cancer Society.

• An estimated 207,090 new cases of invasive breast cancer were diagnosed in women in the United States in 2010. Source: American Cancer Society.

• Approximately 40,000 women in the U.S. died in 2010 from breast cancer. Source: American Cancer Society.

• In 2010, there were more than 2.5 million breast cancer survivors alive in the U.S. Source: breastcancer.org.

      There are millions of reasons for walking and running. Some are no longer with us. But we are fighting to create more entries in the ledger of survivors.

     *Novato’s Relay For Life takes place Saturday, July 30, 2011 at 10:00 a.m. The location is San Jose Middle School in Ignacio, Marin County. Relay For Life is sponsored by the American Cancer Society and is a “life-changing event that brings together more than 3.5 million people - to celebrate the lives of those who have battled cancer; remember loved ones lost to the disease; and fight back against a disease that takes too much.”

Ed. note:blog posts appeared for about two months on Healdsburg Patch as a tribute to Healdsburg Relay for Life on June 11-12. To see her posts, which are excerpts from her just-released book, "Nothing Can Scare Me Now," click on her name.

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