The reason I Race is for my Parents. When I was a junior in high school, I suffered nerve damage in my knee. The pain was so bad that I would rarely sleep and I was out of school for the first half of my junior year. Medical knowledge about how to treat nerve disorders is limited and at the time I was told they were going to teach me to live with the pain since they could not cure me. At 16 years old it felt like my life had ended and I could not grasp the idea of how much paint so many others in the world were going through.
My life was dramatically changed during this time and two events stand out everyday in my mind. I was lucky at the time to have very good dual coverage health insurance, but my father had to spend much of free time fighting insurance companies. It was not enough that he had the stress of worrying about the physical well being and the mental health of his son.
The second one is the day my mother walked into my room and began crying. She felt helpless, unable to protect her child from pain. It was by far the hardest moment of my life because as helpless as she felt, I did not have the power to do anything for her. In those moments I realized that I was not the only one facing the battle against the nerve damage, my parents felt every bit of the pain along the way.
The doctors could not tell me what caused the nerve disorder and they have no idea how to explain what helped my knee get better. In the end though I am lucky to be healthy, but there are so many families that are together facing their own battles. That's why I no longer Race just for my Mother and Father, but for everyones mother and father. It is important for me to work towards a world where families do not have to add the stress of medical insurance to the stresses of fighting for their lives. Please help me create a world where families will not feel helpless.
Your fundraising dollars drive our work across Oregon & SW Washington. Our region continues to have the highest incidences of breast cancer in the country with 70 women diagnosed each and every week in Oregon. 10 will die.
Please support my participation in the Eugene Race for the Cure with a donation, and join us in the global movement to end breast cancer forever. There is only one way we can accomplish this: Together.