Two Coyotes

Training to walk 39 miles takes a large part of the day.* Ed and I often trained in shifts, since Lily and Emmy could walk far, but not as far as we wanted to walk. One chilly spring day we all really pushed to walk 12 miles, and that was a little too much for the girls. (And almost too much for me and Ed!)

One Saturday last spring Ed walked a few miles while I took the girls to piano lessons. That afternoon, we walked with the girls in the forest preserve along the Des Plaines River. It was a beautiful spring day; the trees had tiny green leaves and the forest floor was covered with flowers.

Spring violets

I don’t remember how many miles we walked that day, but when we got to the parking lot, I decided that Ed could drive the girls home, and I could walk the rest of the way to get in about 3 more miles. We figured it should only take me about an hour to walk home, and we said our goodbyes, along with plans to pick up Chinese food for dinner so that I wouldn’t have to cook!

Ready to enjoy my solitary walking time, I started off on the path and opened up a granola bar for a snack. I took one bite…and saw two coyotes on the side of the path ahead of me. The darker coyote stayed to the side, unsure of what to do. I wrapped up my remaining granola bar and froze, unsure of what to do. The lighter colored coyote started loping on the path toward me. He seemed very sure of himself! I wondered; did he want my granola bar? How close was he going to get? Should I start making some noise?

As soon as he crossed a small bridge that went over a shallow gully, he dashed back into the forest and disappeared. His black companion decided the bridge was not for her, and she crossed the path right where she was and soon followed after him.**

I breathed a sigh of relief, continued on my way while eating the rest of my granola bar, and made it home in about an hour, just as anticipated and without any further excitement.

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*Ed and I were training for the Avon 39 Walk for Breast Cancer, which we completed in June.

**I have no idea what the sex of the coyotes were. Assigning one as male and the other as female just made sense.

 

 

To Survive or Not to Survive

On the second morning of the Avon 39 Walk to End Breast Cancer, Ed and I ate breakfast in a big tent with other walkers. One of the fun things about walking 39 miles with a bunch of strangers is that strangers share stories, and then become friends.

Ed eating oatmeal for breakfast!
Ed eating oatmeal for breakfast!

One of our new breakfast friends was walking for her sister, and when I began to ask the details about her sister, the answers were astonishingly tragic. Twenty-five years ago, her sister was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was only 26. She died just a few years later, when she was 32 years old. “She was so young!” I exclaimed.

“You were young, too,” said the woman, who had just heard that I was a 20 year survivor after being diagnosed when I was 27.

Yes, I was young. And how different my breast cancer journey would have been if I had had different doctors. For years, I resented the way I was treated; how I was shuffled from the exam room to radiology to the surgeon’s office, all in a matter of hours. I was never given the opportunity to call someone for support. (Let me remind you, this was before everyone had a cell phone! I had a “car phone,” one that needed to be plugged into the car because the batteries were too expensive.)

The surgeon scheduled a lumpectomy for the very next morning, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to have surgery so quickly. After all that shuffling around, I called my parents as soon as I left the clinic. My parents made a phone call to my mom’s doctor (At the time, Mom was a 13 year breast cancer survivor) and made an appointment for me. We cancelled the lumpectomy and picked up my mammogram films the very next day. After a second opinion, I eventually did have a lumpectomy, but I wasn’t rushed to make that decision.

The DeKalb clinic left a really bad taste in my mouth, and yet it has taken me 20 years to realize that the doctors there served a very important purpose in my survival. The urgency those doctors gave my situation probably saved my life. I wasn’t told to wait and see; I was told I needed to take action immediately. Through that sense of urgency, I was diagnosed at Stage 1 and had no cancer in my lymph nodes. Many young woman have more advanced breast cancer at the time of diagnosis because they are simply considered too young to have breast cancer.

Fortunately, now that young women are diagnosed with breast cancer more often, doctors are less likely to just “wait and see” when a woman has a breast lump. While I still am unhappy with the bedside manners of the doctors during my initial mammogram, I am so grateful that 20 years later, I’m still here with no recurrence of breast cancer.

Twenty years and counting!

Ed and Ginny
The start of our second day of walking

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