I got a message from a high school friend's brother today telling me she was in town and in the hospital. He gave me her phone number and I called her to see what was going on. She told me she was diagnosed on December 18th with stage 3 inflammatory breast cancer. Her mother died about 3 years ago from breast cancer, and her father about 6 years ago from cancer as well. She was crying as she told me, and my heart was breaking and I felt so helpless. She is 36 years old, and facing a long, hard battle. She's in the hospital because she developed a blood clot in her arm, most likely from the flight from FL to PA. She's decided she doesn't trust her doctors in FL (the docs here said she should NEVER have flown 1500 miles) so she's staying in PA for her treatment.
This really freaked me out. It also made me realize that even though what we did was small, every little step taken toward finding a cure for breast cancer is more important than ever. It makes every single pink lid we collected seem more meaningful than ever, because those lids we sent in could be the lids that raise the money to find a cure for Dawn's cancer.
I think I'll be leading a Mammary Mafia team again this year. I hope you'll all join me once more...
We Helped Save Boobies, Can We Help Feed America?
- jsnzmom
on Jan. 7, 2009 at 6:11 PM