I’m participating in the CIBC Run for the Cure this year. You can see my personal page (or donate) here: Connie’s Run for the Cure page. I’m not sure what has possessed me to do this really. As anyone knows who knows me, knows I don’t run. I never have and probably never will. But I can walk. And I plan on walking the 5k.
Doing this is a gauge for me. One of the side effects from chemo that hasn’t really gone away is my ability to walk without pain. I’ve been going to the gym and using a treadmill and it’s been helping and I hope by Sept 30th it will have helped enough for me to make the 5k trek. If I make it then I can kiss this side effect from chemo goodbye! Not only that but it is for a good cause.
I’ll be walking with a girl from work and anyone else who wants to go with me 🙂 Wish me luck!

Pink has always been one of my favorite colours. Not necessarily the baby pink that represents breast cancer, but it is pink. For a while, going through treatment I hated it. Every where I turned some company was selling something pink and donating portions of the proceeds to breast cancer research. It almost made me feel guilty when I didn’t buy the pink garbage bags or toilet paper. To top it off, I found out that the first breast cancer ribbon was actually peach. If you want you can read a little about it here: Think Before You Pink. I’ve come to terms with that and got back to liking pink again without feeling the need to pick everything pink just because it represents breast cancer.
Lately I’ve been feeling the need to make a difference, to somehow pay back the people that helped me through all this, both professional and personal, and to somehow pay it forward. I know that I’ll be contacted in March and will go through training to be a volunteer for the CancerConnection and their peer support system, but it doesn’t seem like it’ll be enough.
Out there somewhere is something that will make me feel like I didn’t go through all this for nothing. It can’t be for nothing. There has to be a purpose for it.

Every day I try not to think about having had breast cancer. I try to act as if my life is ‘normal’, at least to the people around me and I think I do a pretty good job. I keep hoping I’ll wake up one day and not even remember what it was all like, the surgeries, the chemo, the radiation. But that wasn’t today. I have so many reminders, no boobs, sore joints, hot flashes, my screwed up shoulder and no hair. I can’t look into the mirror without remembering.
I guess my big question is I wonder if people are getting tired of hearing me talk about it or will they still listen to me and understand that this breast cancer was and still is a major part of my life? Am I allowed to still mourn my losses and feel crappy and depressed? Or am I expected to get on with my life, put it all behind me?