By Steven Baker Campus Editor This was Amanda Foster's third Race for the Cure, but this time she could only look on. "I started out the morning sick," Foster, 29, said. "I don't know if it was the chemo or what."
But at Fort Worth's annual event Saturday, she sat in the Survivor Tent along with other women, both young and old. Her porcelain-like face was pale, and she wore a pink bandanna and baseball cap over her thin hair, most of which chemotherapy had taken from her. Women who had survived the illness or were currently fighting it wore these pink caps. Organizers provided oranges, apples and bread in the tent, but Foster sat with family and friends, eating nothing. "People don't realize how little funding there is for breast cancer," Foster said. "This is the only national organization that solely supports breast cancer victims." Participants in the eighth annual Komen Tarrant County Race for the Cure raised more than $500,000 for breast cancer victims Saturday at Amon Carter Stadium. Seventy-five percent of this amount will go toward treatment, screening and education for women in Tarrant County, and 25 percent will be used for research through the Susan G. Komen Foundation National Grant Programs, according to the Tarrant County Race for the Cure Web site. More than 14,000 men and women participated in the event, which was moved to the TCU campus because of the F-2 tornado that severely damaged parts of downtown Fort Worth two weeks ago. Most women wore pink posters taped to the back of their T-shirts stating, "I Race for the Cure in celebration of " or "I Race for the Cure in memory of ." Everyone could run in the one-mile, 8 a.m. Fun Run, but only women could run in the 8:30 a.m. five-kilometer run. The parking lots and streets surrounding Amon Carter Stadium were decorated with pink balloons and bouncing pink baseball caps as women gathered for the race. When Fort Worth Police officers were able to clear Stadium Drive, Mayor Kenneth Barr fired one shot into the air, and the Fun Run began.
Suddenly, the music flowing from the speakers was interrupted with the announcement that the five-kilometer run was about to begin. The eclectic group hurried to the starting line across from Daniel-Meyer Coliseum on Stadium Drive. Barr stood alongside KXAS Channel 5 sportscaster Scott Murray, the event's master of ceremonies, on a scaffold elevated near the starting line. The dense crowd of women, jogging in place, stretched for at least a half mile down Stadium Drive. Soon after Barr began the 5K race with another shot, onlooker Bryan Hill made his way to the finish line to await relatives who were running in the race. Hill wore a black-and-white photocopied picture of his sister, Michelle Hill Simpson, taped to the back of his white T-shirt. Simpson died of breast cancer at the age of 45 on Feb. 12 after fighting the illness for almost three years. "Michelle was one of the strongest women I have ever known, but this disease still beat her in an earthly sense, not a heavenly sense," Hill said. "Michelle was a survivor and walked in this race for two years, and now she's not. But it is wonderful to see all the people that did show up." Some women crossed the finish line jogging, while most finished at a walking pace. After finding water and other refreshments, some of the women decided to leave, while others slowly filed into the bleachers of Amon Carter Stadium for an awards assembly.
"My emotions before the race are always eager and anticipating because I am looking forward to seeing the success of the survivors," Massey said. "But there is a lot of memory here, too. When the survivors come up after the trophies are awarded following the race, the feeling is closer than sisterhood. It is a depth that can't be reached." Gretchen Chambers, 63, said she had four friends walking in her honor in the one-mile fun run. On the brim of her pink cap she wore the golden number "24," declaring how many years she had been a survivor. "I was walking (the one-mile fun run) in the memory of my mother, so it was a pretty moving experience," Chambers said. "You don't have bad memories of illness. You have memories of survivors and hope. (Race for the Cure) is a powerful experience." Foster said she wants to have a "24" on her pink hat someday. "I turned 29 on Thursday, and my niece asked me what I wished for," Foster said. "I asked for a cure."
Steven Baker
By Jeri Petersen Senior Reporter My sister's journal entry on July 14, 1995, read, "My worst nightmare has come true - I have been diagnosed with cancer." She was 44 then, and we lived 1,200 miles apart. Her strained voice over the telephone didn't seem real, and terror washed over me from my scalp down to my shaking knees. I had shared a room with my sister Pat until I was in about sixth grade. We giggled until late at night, commiserated about our spankings and scolding and made tents with blankets between our two beds. We shared clothes, record albums, nail polish and hair curlers. But she was nearly six years older than I was, so when it came to naps, I was on my own. I recall waking up in the middle of the afternoon and being afraid to get out of bed because of what was surely under there. The monsters under my bed were snakes, dogs, lightning and - of all things - cancer. My fears of dogs and lightning were grounded in experience, but I can't explain why a little girl would be afraid of a disease - unless it was a premonition. I don't recall when I first became aware of what cancer does, but I lived in terror of it. I had a morbid fear that I would get it and die an agonizing death, the ravenous cells eating away my organs. As I matured, got married and had children of my own, I learned to get along with dogs and to avoid snakes and lightning. As science made inroads to controlling cancer, that fear moved to the back of my mind.
Fear strikes close to home But in my late twenties, my world was shaken when my maternal grandfather became ill with prostate cancer. His name was Christian - a fitting name. His smile was permanent and so were the deep dimples in his smooth tan cheeks. His sky blue eyes twinkled as he sang nonsense songs in German to us until we laughed uncontrollably. The last time I saw him, he was writhing in his bed, crying softly. His cheeks were sunken and the blue eyes were clouded. He didn't know I was there. I was angry - furious with the disease that tortured my gentle grandfather, enraged that it supplanted my happy memories with ones that haunt me still. The demon struck again a few years later - this time my mother's sister. My anger turned to fear. Two members of my family had fallen.
Holding a friend's hand Shortly after my aunt's death, my husband was transferred to Texas, and I made new friends who became my family. One of them, a 40-something mother of six, was stricken with Hodgkin's Disease a few years after I met her.
An intimate relationship evolves when one friend walks next to another whose sole job from day to day is to live. She had to let me see parts of her life and home that she would rather keep private. Two of my relatives had died of cancer, yet I had not felt close to the disease until I shared my friend's daily battle. She recovered and returned the scarves, which I gratefully folded and put in a drawer.
Another battles the disease When my sister called, I sank into a chair to collect myself, then went to the drawer. I tucked the head wraps into a package along with some earrings and lipstick to send to my monster's newest victim. She chose to have a radical mastectomy followed by a condensed round of chemotherapy - four treatments over 12 weeks. She suffered intense side effects in cycles: first, nausea, severe headaches and fatigue, then painful mouth sores and finally indigestion and diarrhea. And she was always freezing cold. Exactly two weeks after she began chemotherapy, her hair began falling out in handfuls. A friend offered to shave her head, but she was not ready for that. Within another week, however, all that was left were small wispy tufts stuck tight to her scalp, and she called her friend back. Eventually, she lost every hair on her body, including eyelashes and eyebrows. "To be totally bald was as hard as anything," she said. " I looked like a 90-year-old man. It was humiliating to lose even parts of me I didn't need to lose." If the hair loss was not devastating enough, she had to face the sight of her lopsided chest. "I wanted to be alone when I took the bandages off," she said. "I fell apart." She underwent her mastectomy on Aug. 1 and began chemotherapy on Sept. 11. By Christmas, however, her hair showed signs of regrowth. "I was sitting by a window and the kids said, 'Mom, there are sparkles on your head - we think your hair is coming back!'" she said. "I told them, 'All I want for Christmas is my two front hairs.'" She also faced decisions regarding reconstruction or prosthetics. Either way, her womanhood had been marred, and she would never be the same. She has four daughters, and statistics show that one of them will get breast cancer. Her son worries every time he finds a bump or is sick for more than a few days that he has cancer. Her husband struggles with her decision to have a mastectomy without reconstruction. She doesn't go a day without thinking about cancer.
Facing the fear of diagnosis I happened to be visiting my family two summers ago when she went for her three-year evaluation. I wanted to go with her. We both knew it would be either good news or another possible death sentence. Again, I was beside a woman I loved at her most vulnerable moment. My stomach churned, and I would have gladly faced dogs or lightning - maybe even snakes - rather than a diagnosis that the cancer was back. I could only imagine what she must have been feeling. Her tests came back clean. Knowing my family history, I take what precautions I can. But so did my sister. She said when she went to the mall while on chemotherapy, bald and emaciated, barely strong enough to walk, she would become angry when she saw people smoking. "I lived a healthy lifestyle, and I'm fighting cancer. How dare you deliberately take cancer-causing agents into your body!" she would think.
The monster is not omnipotent I despise the monster, but I know it is beatable. Two people close to me succumbed but two survived. That's fifty-fifty. When I was young, I thought cancer equaled death. Saturday I walked in the 2000 Komen Tarrant County Race for the Cure with about 14,000 other women. It is now the second-largest race in Tarrant County and the only female 5K. Many participants wore pink T-shirts, indicating they were cancer survivors. Almost everyone wore pink cards on their backs, either in memory of someone who died or in celebration of one who survived breast cancer. It was a touching, powerful sight. As alone as we might feel when we are going through it, either ourselves or with a loved one, we find strength in numbers. There in a sea of women united in battling a terri fying disease, I felt energized and strong. This was a race for life. My sister is still running, and many of us will continue to run with her. Perhaps her journal entry on July 14, 2000 will read, "I have reached a milestone - I have been cancer-free for five years."
Jeri Petersen |
After being diagnosed with breast cancer on July 14, 1999,
Foster has participated in the Wichita Falls and Texarkana Race for the
Cure fund-raisers. 
As the crowd of men, women and children shuffled up Stadium
Drive in the Fun Run, an all-female group gathered in the Coliseum parking
lot to begin warm-up exercises for the five-kilometer run. On a stage close
to Stadium Drive, three young women led exercises in rhythm to the constant
beat streaming from speakers spaced throughout the parking lot. Some women
narrowed their eyes as they concentrated on the various workout routines,
while most laughed and bounced their feet, oblivious to the music.
Saturday was the eighth finish for breast
cancer survivor Betty Massey, 72, who has been running in the race since
it was brought to Fort Worth. Massey has lost a cousin, sister and friend
to breast cancer.| The TCU Daily Skiff © 1998, 1999 Credits |