I am participating in the New York City Avon Walk for Breast Cancer this year. It is a 2-day/39.3 mile walk in October to benefit the Avon Foundation Breast Cancer Crusade, a 502(c)(3) public charity. Their mission is to provide access to care for all women and to work toward finding a cure.
You may already know that I'm not fond of the color pink and its association with breast cancer. Breast cancer and breast cancer treatment is not pink, and certainly not rosy. But, pink raises money. And, I am very interested in raising money to find better, more effective treatments and ultimately a cure for breast cancer.
So I'm walking, and I'm raising money, but I won't be wearing pink.
I am walking because I can.
I am walking, because I am lucky that my cancer was detected relatively early. I am walking, because twenty months after diagnosis I am healthy and strong enough (knock on wood) to walk 39.3 miles.
I am lucky, and I am grateful.
And, now it is my time, it is my privilege, to help raise money for breast cancer treatment and research.
Every three minutes a woman in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer. In the time that it takes for you to read this blog post, a woman will receive a breast cancer diagnosis. Those are awful and unacceptable statistics.
I know five women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer since I was--only 20 months ago.
And, as I write this it is still hard to believe and harder to write that I have an old college friend who has recently died from metastatic breast cancer.
Some days it feels like a big, fat pink plague.
If you are at all interested, you can make a donation to the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer online by clicking on the following link, which will bring you to my personal page.
http://info.avonfoundation.org/site/TR/Walk/NewYork?px=6147606&pg=personal&fr_id=2070
If all of this fund raising seems too big and corporate and "pink" for you, but you are still interested in finding better treatments for breast cancer, please consider the following fund. My college friend's husband has set up a fund in her name, The Maite Aquino Memorial Fund. It is a perpetual fund to support efforts to cure breast cancer. The Fund will focus on specific research programs that seem to have a high impact on solving the problem of metastatic breast cancer. It is a very targeted, specific fund, and I promise you every penny will be well spent.
http://www.maiteaquino.org/
Maite and I never had a chance to talk about our breast cancer, but somehow I have a feeling that she wouldn't be fond of all the "pink" either.
