2010 Kat's Courage team: June 2011

Continuing the journey in His grip.......

After being diagnosed with invasive breast cancer on October 22, 2007, I realized that raising money for breast cancer makes me feel like I am doing something instead of feeling helpless against this disease. This diagnosis was a big shock to us. I was 40 years old, always very healthy and I had 2 small children(3&1). Breast cancer does NOT run in my family.
With a very supportive husband, family & friends, I made it through months of chemo and major surgeries. As of April 3,2008, by God's grace, I am cancer free!!!! I decided that I wanted to continue the fight against breast cancer by forming a team called ”Kat’s Courage” and raising money to help put an end to this disease. There were so many breast cancer survivor's who encouraged me during my fight. To see these women not only survive breast cancer but thrive after breast cancer, gave me this courage to face my fears. I can only hope to encourage others in the same way. We have just completed the 2010 Susan G. Komen 3-day for The Cure. We will continue to support different organizations that we believe in who are fighting against cancer and working for the cancer patient.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Life After Breast Cancer

I haven't updated in a while since we are not doing very much fund raising this year. Raising money for breast cancer causes helped me to recover from my treatment and surgery by giving me something positive to focus on instead of just feeling sorry for myself. Over the past 3 years our life became way to busy with too many commitments and we hit a wall. Now we are working on finding a balance by trying to spend more time enjoying the kids and all of our blessing.

We did participate in the Breast Cancer Survivor's Network one day walk in Peachtree City. We actually won an award for the most money raised by a team, special thanks to Melonie Jones and her company TNS. BCSN is a great local organization that supports women in Georgia with breast cancer. We also are participating in the Randi Passoff Memorial walk for Paint Georgia Pink in September. We do want to support this organization that was started by one of my hero's and continued by her family in her memory. We don't have any big fund raising plans, no t-shirt orders, no yard sales. We are really taking it easy for now.

Since we haven't been talking about it all so much, it seems like people are assuming that everything is fine, breast cancer is in my past and rarely crosses my mind. That is far from the truth!!! I still think about it every hour of every day. I have several friends who recently found out their breast cancer had came back. This is always a fear of mine, each time I have a little ache or pain and even when I don't. Last month, my cousin Debi lost her long battle with breast cancer after her 3rd occurrence. The treatments are better than they used to be and there is much more hope, even with metastatic breast cancer today. However way to often, I am hearing of friends having re-occurrence and we are still losing too many people we love at much too young of an age.

I have not quit!!! I am just changing my focus to better suite my family and to support local causes that provide direct assistance to women with breast cancer. I appreciate all of your continued support and prayers.