Cancer Sucks

A friend I worked with a long time ago and admire to this day - Kate - has cancer.  She is only 42.  She was a world level athlete in her younger days, playing softball for her home country - a country she cheerfully and self-deprecatingly admits is not a powerhouse in world softball. 

I tried to hire her a few years ago, before cancer struck for the first time.  I think it was hard for her to say no to me for a variety of reasons.  Looking back on it I'm glad she did say no, because she is so much better off having stayed put. 

A couple of years ago we spoke on the phone and she told me she had just been diagnosed with gastric cancer, much more commonly found in older men.  She had been dissatisfied with the diagnostics for what they thought was an ulcer, and pushed till she got a diagnosis.  She was scared but determined.  After months of chemo and surgery she was declared clear of cancer.  Her hair grew back, her color was good, she looked fit again.

Until this past January, when tests revealed that her margins were not so clear after all.  Back into treatment, daily radiation this time, to be followed by more chemo.  She decided to put together a team to walk the Relay for Life - 24 hours walking the community track to raise money and awareness to fight cancer.  I decided to join her team and walk.

After over 10 years' involvement with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training, visiting cancer patients in hospital, sitting at bedsides, attending too many funerals and - thankfully - occasionally a wedding, I admit I've pulled back sometimes from the work of befriending a cancer patient.  Even this year when I felt I should be contributing more to Kate, I was buried in the enormous challenge of taking care of elderly parents. 

So the Relay team was my apology - my feeble way of saying "Here is what little I can do".  I walked for 90 minutes.  I walked around the track whose infield was covered with tents and EZ-Ups, full of people wearing t-shirts with their team names, some professionally done, others marked with Sharpies, all in honor of someone they love who has - or had - cancer. 

There were hundreds of people slowly walking the track, hundreds more in the infield area in support.  From my own athlete days I took off as though it was a workout, pacing myself, counting laps, projecting how many miles I could complete in 90 minutes.  (The answer is 4.5.) 

As I walked in the setting sun of mid-summer evening, people began putting out hand decorated luminaria all around the inside and outside edges of the quarter mile track.  Gangs of kids pulled around wagons filled with nuts and bolts to weigh down the bags, and as the sun sank lower the candles inside were lit.  I walked and thought how each of those hundreds of luminaria bags represented a person; a person who was loved by someone at that track.

Rob came and walked the last 30 minutes with me. 

Cancer picker the wrong diva.