The Sun Has Set On Another Weekend To End Breast Cancer

The Sun Has Set On Another Weekend To End Breast Cancer

I am sitting on my deck reflecting on the past 72 hours. The sun is melting into the horizon in beautiful shades of pink and orange. How appropriate it is to watch this beautiful sunset after a very emotional and challenging hot weekend for all the walkers, volunteers and crew who participated in the Calgary Weekend to End Breast Cancer Walk.
The sun has set on another successful walk. The news sound bytes have emphasized that 2036 walkers and an approximate 700 volunteers have raised 5.6 million for the Alberta Breast Cancer cause. And buried deep within these articles around the news making manly pink tutus, the glittering pink costumes, the hot pink bikers and the brilliantly decorated bras is an allusion that these participants may have raised awareness in the community.
This was my third year of participation for this event. On its inaugural event in Calgary in 2005, I blindly signed up to walk the 60 kilometers just for the challenge. I followed a grueling regime of practice walks and amazingly raised more than the two thousand dollars for breast cancer.
I was prepared. Or at least I thought I was! No one prepared me for the emotion that surreptiously ran through the weekend. The survivors’ stories and their spirited participation were inconceivable to me. Throughout the walk, I followed participants who lovingly and with forethought had the pictures of their loved ones pinned to their back. Some were living legacies but most were not. I wanted to know more about these loved ones because up to this point, I had not personally known anyone who was diagnosed with breast cancer. However as a nurse, I knew many patients in the office who courageously fought their cancer battle with hope and optimism.
At those low points along the route where one had to dig deep to put one foot in front of the other, morale appeared from the least likely spots. Neighborhoods along the route bedecked their homes in simple pink ribbon and pink balloons and left their sprinklers on to refresh the walkers. I thanked them for their awareness in our cause. Others made huge signs that they held up for us to read. They read “Walkers Rule” and “You Make a Difference.” They seemed to be aware. The children of the impromptu pink lemonade stands may not have been aware, but I walked that they may never fear the words, Breast Cancer. There were too many signs that wrote their poignant words; “I lost my mom to breast cancer. Thank you.” They were all too aware.
I was being thanked and all I was doing was walking.
The kilometers melted together as I came to a sudden realization that this was bigger than me and my ability to walk 60 kilometers. It was about the toll that breast cancer takes on those diagnosed with it. It was about the loved ones left behind to mourn their loss. It was about those one in nine people yet to be diagnosed by this dreadful disease. It was about the powerful stories yet to be told. I was aware and it humbled me.
I finished the walk and never felt the same after it. The emotional closing brought forth the tears that came not only from knowing that one can achieve goals they set their sights on, but those goals can metamorphize into something bigger if one opens their eyes and hearts..
The past two years, I have worked crew in the medical tent. I can empathize as the walkers hobble up to the medical tent and wait patiently for one of the “Blister Buster Crew” (as we are affectionately known) to come to their aide. I blindly work on their feet as I urge them to tell me their stories. The survivors talk to me about their choices of optimism and hope. The daughters and granddaughters who lost their mothers and grandmothers tell me about their empty lives without them. The husbands shed tears through their stories sharing with me the love they had for their brave wives and their final moments in their battle against breast cancer. I met Chad from Ontario who was participating in his 18th Weekend since its inception in Canada in 2003, because as he tells me “he just wants to make a difference.” I wanted to know why they did this and they told me.
I found it somewhat poetic that as I poked their blisters on the soles of their feet and bandaged them with care and loving attention that it is definitely easier to look after the soles of the feet than their blistered souls that breast cancer has left them with.

The sun’s pink hues have left the sky just as the rich tapestries of the pink participants of the Weekend have gone home to rest. The orange glow remains in the night sky in the dying moments of the sunset. Orange is the color of passion. It is passion that will bring the walkers, crew and volunteers back next summer to do this all over again.
It is a burning passion to defeat breast cancer.

WKH