Completely heartbroken and pissed off

OK- so cancer. This POS disease that doesn't care who it attacks, which family members it affects for life, which friends's memories will be all they hold onto after someone runs out of time.

My friend ran out of time this week and it's honestly the most inexplicable event I've ever witnessed.  I went almost 34 years without losing a friend to cancer, so in the grand scheme of things- I've been spared.  My first experience with supporting a friend with cancer couldn't have gone better.  Nicole was done with treatment within a year and ran her first marathon this month.  She kicked cancer's butt.  We all were spared.

But my friend Keasha, no offense to Nicole, but Keasha is the epitome of strength and determination.  I met her when I joined the Charlotte Hornets Honeybees Dance Team.  She was such a great role model.  And in her passing I'm learning that Keasha was exactly that to so many other girls. 

Today is probably my saddest day yet in absorbing all of this.  I can't quite get past the anger to be grateful of the impact this will eventually have on me.  My prayer is that it will be revealed to me over to coming days and months.  The funny thing about it is that when I began this entry I felt so much negativity, heck just look at the title entry again.  Shortly after I began typing aggressively, a song called "I Was Here" came on the TV and as much as it made me cry, I did find some comfort in it.  I had never heard it before, even though it's by Beyonce'.  Something about Keasha always reminded me of Beyonce.  When I was a Honeybee in 2000-2001, Destiny's Child was the IT group of the time.  We had a dance to Bugaboo (Keasha's favorite) which we appropriately set to Independent Women the second half of the season (Per Keasha's request :) as soon as that song was released.  And when the Hornets made the playoffs, our player intro music was changed to Survivor, also by Destiny's Child.  Sorry for the long explanation but it was fitting that this song was sung by Beyonce'.

Below are two links- one to an article about Keasha and her husband Chris.  The other is a link to the song "I Was Here" by Beyonce.  One thing I will always remember about Keasha is her laugh, it was loud and sincere.  She lived her life like that- very present and anyone who met her knew she took in every moment.  And she loved it.  I will miss her forever.

Article from Atlanta Tastemakers Magazine
http://tastemakermag.com/former-nfl-linebacker-chris-draft-loses-his-wife-to-cancer/

Beyonce' I Was Here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guHq1tjTi0o

Hope and Heartbreak

I woke up last Friday thrilled about my friend Nicole, a breast cancer survivor, who was about to run the Amica Half Marathon here in Charlotte.  My post was going to be titled “Take that, cancer!”  in celebration of her finishing after a year of fighting cancer and winning.  However, as the weekend progressed, my thoughts started to take a different shape.

In my first blog post I mentioned I never had a “list” of cancer survivors or loved ones to memorialize until recently.  The stats say that 1 in every 3 people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime.  This past weekend I encountered four people who shared their story with me; all of them at various stages of the disease and at various stages of their lives.

Heartbreak- Friday morning during my normal debrief with my boss, we discussed Thanksgiving plans.  She mentioned she would be traveling home to Michigan to see her mom unexpectedly.  Her mom was just diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer at 84.  She took it in stride telling me her mother had smoked for years so the diagnosis wasn’t a huge surprise and that they were beginning chemo treatments immediately.  I respected the strong character my boss has always portrayed and didn’t ask questions that could expose vulnerability but my heart broke for her and her mom.

Hope- Saturday morning I woke up to a call from a friend giving me an update on Nicole’s progress during the half marathon.  She was pacing at 7:30min miles and had just crossed mile 6.  The finish line was right down the street from my home so I got ready and left to meet her friend and her brother there.  The significance of this weekend’s race was not only Nicole exceeding her goal to finish in less than 1 hour and 50 minutes, but that one year ago this past Friday, she was completing her first chemo treatment for stage 1 breast cancer.   What a difference a year makes!  Nicole never once looked at her diagnosis as a hindrance.   Not only has she defeated cancer and completed a half marathon, but she is running a full marathon in Kiawah Island in just a few weeks!  Take that, cancer!

Hope- After I left Nicole, I went to a friend’s house for a small get together where I met another lady, Allison, who was full of life.  She has a beautiful smile and personality.  When I told her what my morning had consisted of, she shared with me that she was also a survivor of breast cancer.  She did have to take treatment and prevention a bit further with a mastectomy and hysterectomy, but she’s approaching 2 years in remission.  Take that, cancer!

Heartbreak- For those of you who watched the Panthers game on CBS yesterday, in the 4^th quarter at the 2 minute warning, CBS showed the bravest little girl with who was on the field with the TopCat Cheerleaders.  Isabella is 6 years old and has neuroblastoma.  From the Mayo Clinic- “Typically, neuroblastoma affects children 5 or younger, says the Mayo Clinic. In fact, it's the most prevalent cancer found in infants.”  Isabella, her mother and a representative from the Make a Wish Foundation stayed on the sidelines for a good portion of the game even though there were a few times she needed to go into the locker room to rest or to warm up.  Right as CBS gave Isabella the spotlight I talked to her mom for a brief moment to learn more.  She shared with me that Isabella has relapsed four times and that the doctor’s finally told them to bring her back to Charlotte from NYC where she was being treated with multiple rounds of chemo.  

Hope- right after her mom said that she let out an exhale and we both looked at Isabella smiling for the camera.  Then her mom said, “But she still keeps fighting.”  Take…..that…..cancer.

My weekend was filled with tons of emotions and thankfully I was able to end it with a super fun night appropriately titled an “Evening of Hope and Inspiration.”  It was a perfect way to be reminded how good and faithful God is and how thankful I am that He is in control.

Each of my encounters this weekend was an opportunity for me and for you, through this blog post of course, to be inspired that we can do something.  We can support through donations, through actions, through encouraging words, and most importantly through prayer that one day in our future we will speak of cancer as a thing of the past.

No matter how heartbreaking a story is, we can choose to have Hope J

Begin...

Cycling.  Not my strong suit.  I’m actually pretty scared of it.  I love spin class – thankfully.  However, the thought of sharing the road with cars while all I have is a helmet to truly protect me from injury terrifies me.  Yes- I consider a scraped knee or elbow an injury.

As a matter of fact, it’s been this fear that has prevented me from riding anything not stationary and weighed down to a YMCA floor.  And of course the night I got back from Austin with my new found excitement to learn how to ride, I watch E:60 on ESPN only for one of the segments to be about a girl who was cycling and got hit by a minivan at an intersection.  Thankfully she survived and her story had a happy ending with her and her husband cycling through Ohio.  But still….the possibility is there, right?

OK- enough of my Debbie Downer attitude.  A very wise friend of mine taught me that when faced difficult situations, “control the controllables.”  I have to look around at what I can control in an effort to gain confidence and overcome my fear.  I wouldn’t feel confident going on a 6 mile bike ride today, but I can make the decision to start by riding the bike in my gym.  I can’t control the steepness of the hills, but I can control my training to gain endurance.   I can’t control what drivers do, but I can control where I ride.  And probably the coolest controllable, I don’t have to cycle on the road by myself; I have an amazing network of cyclists/friends that are eager and ready to help me.  {Insert cheesy smile here :D}

I can choose to hide behind my fear or I can choose to begin now.

I am at the beginning, the start line.  My start line.  It may look like a stationary bike ride in my gym or spin classes on the weekends.  Then learning how to clip in and out of the pedals in a parking lot, and eventually enjoying an inaugural ride on the infamous booty loop. 

That being said please feel free to post any comments or advice for novice cyclers below.  I appreciate the encouragement and words of wisdom more than you know!

Manifest a goal- Live STRONG

Last weekend I joined my best friend, Sandy, in Austin, TX for the 2011 Ride for the Roses benefiting LIVESTRONG.  Ride for the Roses was created 15 years ago by friends of Lance Armstrong to show their support after he was diagnosed with cancer.  The Lance Armstrong Foundation invites all of the top fundraisers for LIVESTRONG and LIVESTRONG Partners out to Austin for a weekend filled with cycling events and celebrations.

I honestly had no idea what I was getting into by saying yes.  I understood why Sandy chose to invite me and I was confident in the work I had done to help her reach her fundraising goal of $50,000 (yes that's three 0's!) for 24 Hours of Booty, a LIVESTRONG partner.  I saw this trip to Austin as mostly a thank you from Sandy and 2 early mornings that consisted of a 5k and watching Sandy bike 20 miles.  Everything else was fair game. 

I came back a new person.  The weekend was filled with moments I will never forget.  Moments that made me laugh, moments that made me cry, moments that made me reflect, moments that made me extremely angry, moments that gave me hope and made me ask- Why am I not doing more?

One of these moments came when we were getting ready to leave the hotel for the LIVESTRONG 5K.  I saw a table where you could write names on cards: "In Honor Of:" and "In Memory Of:"  For most of my life I have never had names I would've thought to list on either card , but on this day I had names to list both "In Honor Of:" and "In Memory Of:"  I chose to walk in honor of my friend Nicole, who is a survivor, and in memory of my Uncle Tony, my boyfriend's mom, and two very dear friends of mine who had lost one or both parents in 2011 to cancer.  It reset my focus on what this weekend really represented.

I will detail many of the other moments in future posts, but it's important to me to share the video that I believe was life changing for many if not all of the people who saw it at the LIVESTRONG awards dinner.

This video is from the LIVESTRONG.org website.  They shared it with us after a speech given by Lance Armstrong. 

He said- "No one loses their battle with cancer.  They simply run out of time." 

When he concluded his speech,  he introduced the video and left the stage.  When the video ended, we all sat in silence, not out of sadness, but out of pure respect to absorb an emotion.  To respond to a call to take action. 

http://www.livestrong.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Strength/LIVESTRONG-Manifesto