Cancer Awareness Cup Cozy

WHY I RELAY FOR LIFE

I am participating in the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life
because I've lost enough friends, family, and pets to this horrible
dis-ease! I want more answers and more options and I want them as soon
as possible!

Nearly everyone I know has been touched by cancer either by going through their own personal battle or by seeing someone they love fight the disease. A childhood family friend's father passed away from lung cancer when I was still just a teen. A few years later I lost a man who had been like a father to me to bladder cancer. While in college one of my mother's friends was diagnosed with breast cancer and beat it only to watch her daughter be treated for triple negative breast cancer in 2013 and lose her battle right before Christmas. My cat was diagnosed with an adenocarcinoma in 2000 and a man I was dating was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2003. My cat lost his battle, but my boyfriend survived. In 2006, less than a year into my marriage, my mother died from stomach cancer. It was at that time we found out my father's brother was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He is still winning his battle. In 2007 my mother's sister was diagnosed with esophageal and stomach cancer and she lost her battle in 2010. It was at her funeral I met her best friend whose daughter is winning her battle against leukemia. Shortly after we were given the news that one of our friends was diagnosed with breast cancer, which she survived, and another with Liomyosarcoma, which she fought valiantly but ultimately lost her battle. I found out on Facebook a high school friend from the class below me is surviving breast cancer. While on R&R from OIF and on the island of Oahu, HI in May 2009 we were informed that friends of ours son was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma at the age of 2. Today you would never know he had ever been sick. In the fall of 2012 our pitbull, Kahlua, was diagnosed with osteosarcoma. It was around this time my husband was introduced to Becky Vasquez Glenn who was also fighting sarcoma. Sadly we lost both of them before Thanksgiving in 2012. My neighbor lost his father to multiple myeloma in 2013, my sister-in-law lost her father on May 18, 2014 to leukemia, and another friend lost her mother to ovarian cancer soon after. We lost our cat, Tumbleweed, to kidney cancer in August 2014 just shy of two months after her 17th birthday. On October 27, 2014 we lost a dear friend to kidney cancer. We are currently providing as much support as we can to a co-worker of my husband whose young son if battling leukemia.

Some day i hope to be a naturopathic physician incorporating
alopathic, alternative, integrative, psychological, eastern, and energy
methods to prevent, treat, and cure cancer. Until then I relay to
support those who are already taking us in that direction!

Every day the American Cancer Society is helping us stay well by
preventing cancer or finding it at its earliest most treatable stages.
They assist families in finding the best resources to help their
friend or loved one deal with a diagnosis and their journey to get
well. The American Cancer Society is also rallying communities (like
ours!) through events like Relay For Life to fight back and find cures
for this disease.

Relay For Life Mooresville
Team Becky
Lori Russell-Head
http://www.relayforlife.org/index