walking 60 km is hard. But cancer is so much harder.

All this week, I have been writing about our Weekend to End Women’s Cancers team, the Winchester Hospital Heelers… but I’ve yet to tell you anything about the actual focus of this event: the 60 km walk through the streets of Ottawa!

Of course, there is a certain amount of training required to prepare your muscles and your feet to walk 60 km over two days. To get ready, we organize a number of training walks throughout the months leading up to the Weekend, and we learn tips and tricks about what (and what not) to wear, and how to stay hydrated, prevent blisters, and keep our muscles loose. No doubt you will have heard the horror stories! Yes… there will be some blisters. And chafing. And even some lost toenails. But compared to the rigours of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, what really are a few lost toenails?

The walk itself is an amazing experience – it is a perfectly organized and executed march that would leave any military logistics officer in awe. As we make our way through the city, walking 35 km on the first day and 25 km on the second, the most enthusiastic and helpful volunteers imaginable keep us safe, fed, hydrated, and smiling. All along the route, pedestrians clap and cheer us on, and cars honk their support. Shopkeepers offer bottled water and, in the residential neighbourhoods, people post signs that thank us for our efforts. Little children serve Dixie cups of water and lemonade, offer gum, and – when the weather has been really hot – invite us to play in their sprinklers. It doesn’t get much better than that!

As we walk, we are achieving our goal – to raise the awareness of women’s cancers, and the funds necessary to improve treatment programs and advance the research that will one day create a future without these cancers.

If you see us this weekend, on June 5th and 6th, honk your horn and give us a thumb’s up! Your support means more than you know. There’s no doubt about it; walking 60 km is hard. But cancer is so much harder.

The Heelers

In my first blog post earlier this week, I mentioned that when I was first asked to join the Winchester Hospital Heelers’ team, I had no intention of walking 60 km in The Weekend to End Women’s Cancers. The Heelers’ enthusiasm was contagious, however, and before long I found myself registering for the event and getting swept up in the team’s fundraising events.

What is it about this group of people that makes being part of the team so special? To be honest, I can’t put my finger on any one thing. I mean, we’re all different ages (we range in age from 17 to 60+), and we’re from different backgrounds, with different family situations, professions and – yes, personalities. Some of us joined because we had friends on the team; others joined without knowing a single person. The amazing thing is that it really doesn’t seem to matter who you know or why you joined – the Heelers are the most welcoming group of people I have ever been associated with. We’re a team, we have a purpose, and we have a blast together.

Being a ‘Heeler’ has perks! The best one, I have to say, is the food. Seriously! We’ve made it a point to ensure that each training walk is followed by a pot-luck meal…and we’ve all discovered the most wonderful recipes at those meals! We have great cooks on this team, so the rule was set early on that recipes MUST be shared. (I remember one member who was given until sundown on the day of a training walk to share a particular grape salad recipe, or suffer the consequences! I’m not really sure what the consequences would have been… but I’m happy to report that we all have the recipe, and we DID receive it before sundown. :-)

I guess what makes our team special is that, during the time we spend planning and hosting our fundraising events and on our training walks (more to come about that part of this undertaking tomorrow!), we take the time to really get to know each other. There’s just no way you can be part of an experience like this without developing a very special bond. We’ve laughed together like we’ve never laughed before… celebrated weddings and new babies together…and cried together when a loved one fell seriously and irreparably ill.

I am honoured to be a part of this group, and so very proud to call them my friends.

We funded a new digital mammography machine

In my previous posts, I mentioned how I became part of the Winchester Hospital Heelers Weekend to End Women’s Cancers team, and how over the past three years, our team raised more than $272,000, 75% of which – or $204,000 – was directed back to the Winchester District Memorial Hospital for cancer care right in our own community. I’m sure you’re wondering what our hospital has been doing with that money! I’ll get to that in a minute…

One of the things that is important to explain about the 60+ people that have been a part of our team over the past few years is that we come from all over the areas served by WDMH; we don’t all live in Winchester! Our team is made up of people from Iroquois, Morrisburg, Williamsburg, Chesterville, Finch, Mountain, South Mountain, Hallville, Osgoode, Greely, Russell, Crysler…and the list goes on. What we have in common is our commitment to our local hospital; our families have all been cared for at WDMH at one time or another – and  such high-quality medical care, close to home – well, you just can’t put a price tag on that.

You might think that traveling to Ottawa for medical care isn’t really that big a deal…but it can be. When you have to tack a minimum of two hours onto the travel time required for each medical appointment, and then you have to deal with the additional expense of traveling at least 100 km roundtrip, that’s only the beginning. You’re a very long way from home if your appointment runs late and you can’t get back home to pick up your kids from daycare on time. It just adds a whole other level of stress.

We have a high incidence of breast cancer in our communities, and it’s no secret that early detection is key to increasing survival rates. So when the Winchester Hospital decided to use the funds raised by our team to finance a new digital mammography machine, we knew that we would be changing lives. Saving lives.

Having a digital mammography machine at our local hospital means that women (and men) now receive the same caliber of medical imaging in Winchester that is available in Ottawa. We no longer have to worry about the possibility of compromising the quality of our medical care, just because we opted to have our tests carried out closer to home. And people who may have foregone more advanced testing in the past because it was too inconvenient to travel to the city now have easier access to that testing. And I haven’t even mentioned wait times! Any way you look at it, it’s a win-win.

A digital mammography machine costs about half a million dollars, no small drop in the bucket. By the end of this year’s Weekend event on June 5th and 6th, we hope to have financed about 60% of that cost through our fundraising. And we have no plans to stop, either, because we know that our efforts will save lives. Let me say that again… our efforts will save lives. We’re just ordinary people, yet we have the potential to save lives. How awesome is that?

There's no "i" in team!

In my last blog post, I mentioned how I became part of the Winchester Hospital Heelers Weekend to End Women’s Cancers team in 2007…

Right from the start, we were a TEAM. We each had to raise $2,000 in donations to participate in the Weekend – a daunting task, or so we thought – so we set about trying to find creative ways to fundraise. With 15 women on the team, we knew that we would each have to do our own individual fundraising – canvassing our neighbours, friends, and relatives. We also decided to organize some ‘team’ fundraising events – a bake sale, giant yard sale, a food and wine event, area road tolls, and a raffle. Our effort was impressive!

Why did we mount such a huge effort? Fundraising for the Weekend to End Women’s Cancers was very personal to us. Through a collaborative arrangement, the ORCF had committed to returning 75% of the funds raised by our team to the Winchester District Memorial Hospital for local cancer programs. For those of us who live in the rural areas, traveling to Ottawa for chemotherapy and radiation treatment adds a whole other dimension of stress to an already stressful situation. The opportunity to contribute to improved cancer care in our community was huge.

We quickly learned that we weren’t alone in our thinking. Our local newspaper got behind us, and began running weekly profiles of the members of the team. Local business owners began calling us, asking how they could help support us in our efforts. We were the ‘little engine that could’; and with so much local community support, there was no way we could fail!

In 2007, our team of 15 raised over $54,000. In 2008, our team grew to 17 members, and we raised over $65,000. In 2009 – are you ready for this? Our team had 52 members and we raised over $154,000. If you do the math, over the three years, that was over $204,000 that came back to our local hospital – to our community – for local cancer care.

In my next post, I’ll let you know what the Winchester Hospital has been doing with these funds…

Breast cancer doesn't define who I am...

Breast cancer doesn’t define who I am. However, it does play a big part in what I’m about to tell you...

I was diagnosed in early 2004 with a very aggressive form of invasive breast cancer; as a result, I had the ‘full-meal deal’ of breast cancer treatment: surgery, then chemotherapy, followed by many rounds of radiation. Every step of the way, whether at the Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre or the Winchester District Memorial Hospital, the care that I received was nothing short of outstanding.

About a year after I had completed my treatment, one of my very good friends (who also just happened to be my chemotherapy nurse at the Winchester District Memorial Hospital) talked me into going with her to a meeting to hear about what was then called The Weekend to End Breast Cancer. A group of women who worked at the hospital were forming a team, and they were looking for people to join them. To be honest, I didn’t really want to go… it was all still a little too fresh for me, and I hadn’t yet quite figured out how to go on living my life. Nevertheless, I went to the meeting, thinking that I could just sign up to help with the fundraising, and perhaps avoid having to put myself “out there” as a survivor.

What is it they say about best laid plans? Oh, right. They go awry. My plans sure did that! I went to that first meeting of the team that became the ‘Winchester Hospital Heelers’ – and those women were just so much fun, and so determined to make a difference – that I caught their enthusiasm bug. I am proud to say that I’ve been a part of that team ever since, and we are really making a difference – contributing in a meaningful way. In my blog posts this week, I’ll be telling you more about our team, the wonderful people I’ve met, and what we’ve been able to do for the ORCF and our local community. 

2007 Winchester Hospital Heelers: