http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/photos/11/110606_cure.html
The Race for the Cure was this past Sunday. Guy, Kelric and I got up very, very early and headed towards Auditorium Shores to be a part of the event. We ate breakfast in the survivor tent. We failed to find the main group of Pink Ribbon Cowgirls to walk with them because I forgot where we were supposed to meet and there were around 22,000 other people hanging around. We walked near the back of the group, and it seemed like everyone was walking faster than we were. But we made it all the way through the Family Walk (which was only 1 mile as opposed to the 3.2 miles of the full course) and it was an unforgettable experience.
We started out by walking over the bridge on South First Street. The lovely aroma of bats (and bat waste) caught our attention as it wafted over the water from the nearby Congress Avenue bridge. Oh boy, that’s a special smell. Then what made my heart catch in my throat was seeing the sea of people coming the other way as they approached the end of the walk. The bridge ahead of us was full of people walking north and it was full of people walking south. The bright pink shirts were in abundance, marking the survivors like me. I was pushing Kelric in his stroller. Guy was walking with me on my right, and I felt my eyes tear up as I thought about all these thousands of people coming together to fight breast cancer.
This year’s Race for the Cure raised $1.2 million.
The link above is to the Austin American-Statesman web site. It has a picture of the survivors who showed up for the picture (which means a LOT more survivors were around but they aren’t in the shot). I am sitting on the front row, fourth from the left. I’m wearing a pink cowboy hat as were most people associated with the Breast Cancer Resource Center. The group picture that includes me goes very quickly in this slideshow, but I found that you can stop the slide show with your mouse. I’m in the first and third slides.
I have a picture of my own to include. It’s of the chair after I pulled out all the pink stuff from the Race for the Cure survivor goody bag. It looks like an explosion of Pepto Bismol, to tell the truth.
While we ate breakfast in the survivor tent, we shared a table with several other survivors. Two of them were swapping stories. Their cancer was caught early enough that they needed only surgery and not chemo or radiation. (Man, I’m jealous!) Both women were a generation older than me and they said how frustrating it was to try to get the insurance companies to cover mammograms for their daughters when their daughters were in their 30s. Ah…I thought. Another reinforcement of the need to convince insurance companies to include this as part of annual screening for younger women…
Kelric started fussing before the Race was over. He was hungry and it was nap time so that was it for us. No hanging around to talk with strangers after our walk. Fortunately, my office building was right across the street so we walked over, I used my magnetic card to unlock the door, and we got to use real restrooms with plumbing instead of the pink porta-potties. And then we went upstairs to my office to feed our baby and let him drift off to a much-needed nap.
Then we loaded up Kelric and headed over to Whole Foods a few blocks away. There we ate a proper breakfast some 3-4 hours after our scant continental breakfast, and in the ladies room a woman asked if I was the person on the Parent:Wise Austin magazine cover this month. Oh my! A first taste of celebrity! I know it’s a small pool and I’m still a very small fish, but the moment was fun. I told her that yes it was I on the cover and my baby was with the husband just outside. We ended up leaving the ladies room about the same time and she oohed and ahhed over an adorable sleeping Kelric for a minute before moving on. I guess I’ll stop complaining about not being mentioned in the article itself. A picture is worth a thousand words, right?
Angela
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