Dedicated or Crazy

Dedicated or crazy, I’ll let you be the judge. I walked 5.5 miles in 101 degree heat about 6pm tonight. Now I do have to admit that I found lots and lots of shade to walk in and I really didn’t think it felt like 101. However, I did look it up on weather.com on my blackberry as I was walking and it did say 101.

This week I am 11 weeks out from my walk in DC and 15 weeks out from…. Scratch that. I just went and checked my training schedules and I have now lost a week somewhere. I’m 10 weeks out from DC and 14 out from Dallas. Hmm, I have lots of training and fundraising still to do. My goal is $4000 per walk or $8000 total. In order to actually walk I am required to raise at least $2300 per walk. I’m halfway to that for DC and almost halfway for Dallas. If you haven’t already, I sure could use your donation. I figure if everyone skipped a lunch out one week and donated that $10 or $15 I’d be at my goal in no time.

Just recently I heard that a colleague’s son (Patrick) has been diagnosed with Wilms’ Tumor at age 7. Wilms’ Tumor is a rare kidney disease found in children. It’s been diagnosed in stage II so that is the good news amongst the bad news as they say it is very curable at that stage. I also have a friend Holly and her son Alex (6) was diagnosed with WIlms’ Tumor in stage I but has now been cancer free for 4 years. Just recently Holly found out her niece, Farrah (5) has been diagnosed with Stage IV Wilms' Tumor and has a 50% chance of survival. Cancer doesn’t play favorites. It doesn’t matter how young or how old. It just comes and turns our worlds upside down. I will be walking for the 3 of them.

I really think I'm just dedicated to finding a cure. I cannot even begin to think what those children have and will be going through. The least I can do is walk 5.5 miles in 101 degree heat. I just have to be smart about it.