May 7, 2005 - Race For The Cure

This morning I got up at 5 am, after barely sleeping just 2 hours so my mom & I could participate in The Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure down at the Fremont Street Experience. This is how we chose to celebrate Mother's Day this year, and we raced (more like walked slowly) in celebration of me, having 2 treatments down and only 2 left to go. Even though I had to get up so early, which was a VERY difficult thing for me to do, being there among 15,000+ other people was a great feeling. Just thinking about it now gets me all choked up. I met Paula Francis from Channel 8 News for the first time and mom and I had our picture taken with her. Aside from her, I also met a lot of very open and caring strangers who just came up and hugged me and congratulated me. It was great to see so many women who have survived breast cancer, and these little old ladies who had so much life and vigor. Needless to say it was a very special day for me, because it reminded me to never give up hope. Afterwards, we met up with Grampa Vince and Natalie and had a Mother's Day lunch at Joe's Crab Shack.
(In case you are wondering, in the picture - I'm on the left, Paula's in the middle and mom's on the right.)