Breast Cancer Affects Us All

On most years, on one Saturday morning in October, I put on my comfortable shoes, my pink sweatsuit and my t-shirt to walk in the Komen Race for the Cure. It is important for me to participate any way that I can because I have been affected by breast cancer. For the record, I have never had it, and hope to never have it. However, that has not stopped this disease from affecting me.

Two of the ladies in the picture have both had breast cancer. The one in the foreground with the beautiful fuzz growing back on her head was my friend Pat. I met Pat years ago at church and liked her from the beginning. She was this quiet, calm person. I did not know all of her story - not until we started working for the same agency. It was then that I found out that cancer was something that she had fought twice before and was now fighting for the third time. She had worked with it, raised a son with it, seen the birth of her grand-daughter with it and never stopped smiling. Even when she lost her hair, she had accumulated a collection of hats and scarves for going out.

One of our state-wide television stations wanted to feature Amazing Arkansas Women. I sent in the article that I had written for our local newspaper, and Pat was chosen. A large group of co-workers and family showed up to shoot the piece. We stayed and walked in the Race for the Cure. For months after that piece was done, Pat could be anywhere in the state and people recognized her. It was wonderful, and she beat the cancer again.

A couple of years after that, the cancer came back again, and we all rallied around her as always. By this time, the sister of her daughter-in-law had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and one of Pat's best friends had to be treated as well. We had many reasons to walk that year, and we did; she couldn't, so we walked for her too. What we didn't know was that she was still our Pat, still stoic and forever planning. By the time we knew about her Stage 4 cancer, she had already engaged hospice services.

A group of friends and family were with her day and night. Since I was one of the shorter people, I curled up and slept on a loveseat. It wasn't the most comfortable thing but I didn't care. I sat holding her mother's hand on the night Pat left us. The pain that she had felt in those days was over.  The strongest person I have ever known was strong until the end.

No, I've never had breast cancer, but it has affected me, and it always will. Every year, whether I am able to participate in the race, I celebrate the lives of each and every survivor - and of the people who faced it on their own terms and lived their lives on their own terms - people like Pat. You go girl!