Thank You!

Yesterday I was sitting in my office and got a call from the front desk that one of our Vendors, David Batchelders or Davids Roof cleaning, had a donation to make for our walk.

I went up front to get it and told him thank you so much and then he handed me a paper. It was for a walk they were doing for Cystic Fibrosis for his son, Ben. I had no idea that his son had Cystic Fibrosis and we talked for a long time about it. The paper had the cutest pictures of Ben on it. One of them was him in his little vest he wears to shake him up a little (I know that isn't exactly what it does but its the easiest way to explain it) and I told David that my friend with CF has one of those also and he said that no until recently they didn't even make the vest's for kids they were only for adults.

David was also telling me about the strides they are making if CF research and how close they are to finding a cure. David and his family are participating in a walk in May for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. If you would like more information please go to www.teambensbuddies.org.

I have a very good friend (love you Dara) that has CF and she is 40 something and raising 4 beautiful children on their little farm in Port Angeles and doing very well. I am so thankful that everything seems to be going very well with her, some people arn't so lucky with this disease so lets support it.

What has become apparent to me is that we are going to have to work as a community to fund finding cures and therapy's for many diseases. Our government is so in dept that these things are going to be put on the back burner. If everyone pitches in a little we can make a huge difference.

Oh by the way I forgot to post my mileage from last week. I did complete 20 miles for the whole week. Saturday was a little hard because once again I was at the cabin and I also had a pretty bad cold but we did get 3 miles done.

I went away with a great group of friends last weekend and we had a ton of fun. Our very good friend Missy who is a breast cancer survivor got to really finally enjoy herself after her battle. We did have a discovery though, one more thing out of everything that has been taken from her because of breast cancer was the ability to do cartwheels. Just when she thinks she knows everything that cancer has effected in her life now she cant do cartwheels. This may sound silly but I did feel really bad for her. This is why we need to get rid of this crap.

Anyway all in all we have a very productive week with baseball and walking in store.

We have shirts for sale!!! For a donation of $20 you can be the proud bearer of your very own "Operation Save A Rack" shirt.

We have made an alternate deal with people who want to donate $100. They will be receiving a free T-Shirt.

If you are interested in a shirt please email me at cfjeld@bell-anderson.net. If you are interested in a free T-Shirt go to ttp://www.the3day.org/site/TR/2010/SeattleEvent2010?px=5021328&pg=personal&fr_id=1471 To make your donaton.

Thank you everyone!!!

UUGGHHH

Last weekend I clocked 21.1 miles all week. Saturday was the hardest because we were at the cabin in Eastern Washington so I got to see every spots of Sunland I dont think that I have ever been trying to get 4 miles in. I think I hit about 3.5 before I had had enough of Sunland. This is going to be the tough part when we are out of town. I did take my pedometer on the trail the other day so I knew how many steps a mile was so that helps quite a bit.

Yesterday was my first day of the official Susan G Komen 24 week training plan and I didnt start off so great. I had a sick baby (I know she is almost 4) and had a hard time fitting in the walking. I did an aweful 1 mile on our tredmill at home and 2 miles on the track at the high school while Braden had practice. So needless to say my first day wasnt spectacular but I am hoping to make it up thru the week.

This weekend I am going away with my girlfriends and I am sure I will get plenty of crap for walking but I am going to try and stick to it as best I can.

Anyway not a whole lot new but I cant wait for the weather to start being better to walk in.

Training

I have started this blog as a journal for my sanity and accountablity. I have been pretty good but this just adds one more thing for me to be accountable for.

I started a few weeks ago in my training and have been doing fairly well. The first week I walked 12 miles, 2nd 21, 3rd 27 and last week 21.1 for a total of 79.1 so far. It hasnt been to bad because most of my training has been on the Foothills trail by our house. I really like walking outside and find that it goes a ton faster. There have been a few days that I have had to go to the gym and use the treadmill. I like it at the gym rather than at home because I can escape instead of kids coming in and out yelling and screaming. Last week I got to feel like a rockstar for a day because the treadmill that I got on at the Gym must have been callibrated wrong. I got home and told Scott that this is getting pretty easy. Well needless to say I went back to the Gym and used a different treadmill and was back to where I was before the infamous "bad" treadmill. I know which one it was though so if I am ever feeling down and out and need a boost of self esteem I will hop on that one.

Braden has actually joined me on a couple of my walks along with some great friends. I just text everyone that I am headed down there and whomever shows up-shows up. I either get some great conversation in or I go with my i-pod. Actually my sister lets me borrow hers because I am to cheap to buy my own, Thanks Dawn!

I am really looking forward to getting healthy and hopfully, possibly, maybe even loosing a couple pounds but thats no ultimately why I am doing this and if you dont know why than read the very first post on this blog (he he).

Thanks to all of my family and friends I am doing really well with my fundraising efforts. I am already up to $1800 but still have a ways to go. Thank you everyone for your love and support.

Why we are doing what we are doing.

On December 16th Dawn and I’s life was changed forever. Our mom was diagnosed with Breast Cancer.
We had no idea what to expect nor how to react. The only way I knew to react was cry and Dawn’s was to be angry. “Why? Why did this happen to our mom”?
I think we begin to become complacent in life and we also think “my family will not be a statistic”. We don't even have cancer in our family so how can my mom have breast cancer?
Well sure enough a few agonizing days after that we met with the amazing Dr Kaplin at the Swedish Cancer Institute and confirmed the results. Thanks to a very good family friend who has been thru breast cancer herself we were able to get to see him. He was not taking new patients at the time.
We did not have any idea what the next few months had in store we just knew that our lives had changed.
After Mom saw Dr. Kaplin she got into see her Surgeon, Dr. Hanson. Wow he was an amazing man as well. The people at Swedish that took us through our very short journey (comparatively speaking) are absolutely amazing. These people have to deal with this horrible disease every day with thousands of people. They made Myself, Dawn, Mom and Dad feel like we were the only people on the planet and they TRULY cared. We went to every single appointment with Mom and Dad and they always had 4 chairs in the room and never once scrambled for them, they just did it.
There was no way around the fact that she was going to have to have her left breast removed completely. The mammogram and biopsies showed that mom had 2 spots that were classified as ductal carcinoma in situ (pre-cancerous) and 1 spot was ductal carcinoma and they were in very different spots that is why she couldn't just have a lumpectomy. After the initial meeting with doctor Hanson she had an MRI to make sure there was nothing else anywhere else. After they discovered that the “crap” was just in her breast they scheduled her surgery.
Four days before her surgery Mom decided that she may want to do a bilateral mastectomy because she didn't want to be lopsided or have to worry about this happening again. I got a hold of the nurse and asked her what we would have to do to change mom surgery. Well long story short we made an appointment to talk to Doctor Hanson one day before the surgery at eight in the morning. After some discussion it was a given that she was going to have a bilateral. Dr Hanson’s scheduler had told us that it was going to have to be a couple more weeks if mom wanted a bilateral. Dr. Hanson worked his magic and fit her in for the next morning so no waiting!
Mom handled surgery like a champ. They only had to take 2 nodes on one side and 1 on the other so we were very happy with that. When they did the testing on the nodes during surgery they came back clear but we would have to wait for about 6 days to make sure.
6 days later we met with Dr Hanson and he said the nodes were clear. We all were breathing a huge sigh of relief except mom because she had “the drains” in and it looked like they were going to have to stay in for a while. Right after our appointment with Dr. Hanson we went back to Dr. Kaplin for the treatment plan. Dr. Kaplin said he wanted to do 1 more test on the tumor itself before he ruled out Chemo and Radiation. This test was going to take about 3 weeks.
On February 1st, 2010 mom got a call at home from Dr. Kaplin at seven thirty at night to say that the her “Onco Dx” text came back better than he had ever seen. That means no Chemo and no radiation. So needless to say this was a very monumental day in our lives especially moms.
The last few months have been a whirlwind but all that is left are some mammograms for Dawn and I and a hormone pill for Mom for the next five years.
Mom’s story is a drop in the bucket compared to what some women go thru so that is why Dawn and I have decided to take on this journey to try and raise awareness and money for Breast Cancer. I know that If it wasn't for the research that the Susan G Komen fund has supported we would not have been so lucky.
We are going to do our little part and try this out and ya never know, this could become annual and you might even be compelled to join us.