We did the Seek the Peak Relay – whew!

Submitted by Kim T.

Well we did the Seek the Peak and are still standing. We were not last – we were 3^rd (from the last).  We all shaved 4 minutes off of our time so we did do it all in under 3 hours (so we were really excited).  We are the top fundraising team. We also donated the $2900 from our Young and the Breastless account, which Rethink has said they will direct to breastcancernowwhat.ca.  So all together we raised over $9000.

I was the top fundraiser for quite awhile and then one woman, Jennifer Matthews, who was really close to me passed me the morning of the race.  I forced my family to donate more – ha ha.  I realized how competitive I am.  For whatever reason it is really important to me to be in that top spot it is almost like a mission.

I met Jennifer at the top of the mountain and gave her a big hug and thanked her for her fundraising. It sounded from her fundraising page that she works in the medical field as she states that she has recently witnessed a number of young women go through breast cancer and recently lost someone she had got quite close to.  Many of her donors were doctors.

It is so important to advocate for younger women facing breast cancer because many doctors don’t.  Rethink asked me to write up a press statement and I said,

“Young women need a voice like Rethink to advocate on their behalf, because often when they find a lump, their doctors dismiss it saying ‘you are too young to get breast cancer, it is probably nothing’.  They are also too young to die from the disease and many do, due to the fact their cancer goes undiagnosed and it is often more aggressive.”

The really good news is that with this fundraising, Rethink will continue to fund the www.breastcancernowwhat.ca website, which I think is an amazingly valuable resource for young women across Canada and around the world.  As we know, for some, it is the only young women’s support available to them.

Lavonne looked like a million bucks!  She is taking very good care of herself (what else is new?).  They got clear margins with her lumpectomy and the lymphs where clear.  She is opting for a full mastectomy and thinks it will be scheduled for August.  As she says, “I am getting rid of this stupid boob”.

What was an interesting factoid that neither of us knew, is that if you are going to get a reoccurrence in the breast with the primary breast cancer it is likely going to happen within the first year.  That in fact a reoccurrence is usually a metastases which will more likely appear in the bone, brain or liver. Who knew?  I would love to hear more about this on our site, because I suspect many women think the reoccurrence is going to appear as a new lump in the offending breast.

~ Kim T.