This is my story.

In 2021 shortly after my mother passed away from stage 4 colon cancer I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My mother had previously survived breast cancer. At the time of her death she was 68 years old. She had never had a colonoscopy despite symptoms. To this day I don’t know why. As a nurse I should have seen the obvious signs and symptoms as should her doctor.

At the time of my diagnosis I was considered a young 45 year old. My treatment included multiple surgeries, a slow healing period followed by chemotherapy and a hormone modulator.

While I was undergoing my treatment a very close friend was undergoing treatment for liver cancer that ultimately metastasized to her lungs. She lost her battle. I lost a friend. Her family lost a wife, mother and more.

These are not my first memories of cancer. My very first memory goes back to the 1960s when my then 10 year old cousin was diagnosed with a type of leukemia. I was in middle school. He did not survive. Surviving cancer in the 1960s was not expected.

Unfortunately, 20 years after my initial diagnosis during the COVID crisis I was again diagnosed with cancer. This diagnosis was a new diagnosis unrelated to the first. It was however a stage 2 rather than stage 1 cancer and in the previously unaffected breast. Treatment was different and less invasive. I am now approaching 5 years of being cancer free. A new beginning perhaps.

This is just my story. It is not the story of many of my friends, my brother, my brother in law or those I have met along the way. Their stories are different. Some have lost a short battle and some a much longer battle. Some are just beginning their 5 years of survival.

So, why do I ride?

I ride and pledge to raise money to be used for continued research and treatment of cancer patients and their families. I ride as Living Proof that raising more money of which 100% will be used for specific research and treatment of this disease will allow more patients to live to see more sunrises and more sunsets.

I hope you can help me by donating to my goal of raising $6000.00 of which 100% will go to the research and treatment of cancer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute made available to every child and every adult world wide.