By the time you read this blog entry the Race for the Cure will either be days away or already done. I’m starting to get a bit nervous. THE big day is coming - June 5 where I live. THE day I’ve been working, training toward. Will I run the whole five kilometers? Probably not. But I'll certainly run farther than I could eight months ago. Months ago I couldn’t go up a flight of stairs without getting winded. Now I’m running!

I started off entering this race for me. But I’ve heard that others run in this race in honor or memory of someone else. And now I guess I will too. Since I started my own journey with breast cancer, I’ve met countless women who took this journey before me. I've heard from some of you in this blog.

When I was first diagnosed with cancer on June 26, 2009, I rushed to get the chest X-ray my physician suggested. Everything was a whirl in my mind - I kept trying not to break down sobbing from fear. I also remember the X-ray technician telling me, “You’ll be OK…I’m a 15-year survivor.”

So many new people I’ve met have inspired me. They've said, "I'm a 17-year survivor...a one-year survivor...an eight-year survivor…three-year survivor..." and on and on. A few months ago I met a wonderful woman at the salad bar in the cafeteria at work. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer “even before it had a color.”

These are the countless women that helped me through the past year of my life. I don’t remember many of their names. But I do remember feeling that if they could be survivors then I could too. My husband told me I was a survivor from the first day I was diagnosed. Now I, too, want to tell the next women in line for this journey that I am a survivor and they can be also. I want to encourage them and carry them as I’ve been carried through the past year.

It’s for them that I’m now going to run on Saturday.