If you’re a woman and a cancer survivor or a cancer provider, you have until September 30, 2011, 12pm CTS, to apply for the Living Well, Getting Well, 2011 Life Beyond Cancer Retreat at Lakeway Resort and Spa in Austin, Texas. Forgive me for not posting this sooner, because I want all of you to come and experience this life-changing event.

This year’s Retreat takes place November 18-20th, 2011. Because space is limited to 150 participants, you must submit your online application by this Friday, September 30th.<PREVIEWEND> Applications will be reviewed and those applicants who are selected to attend will be notified via email by October 7th. Here’s a link for you to APPLY TODAY. Did I mention I’m one of the speakers? Hurry, girlfriends, and fill out your application. I can’t wait to meet you!

Here’s the BRENDA’S BLOG about last year’s Retreat. Sunday, November 21, 2010: I just returned from four amazing days at the Life Beyond Cancer Retreat. Held at Lakeway Resort in Austin, Texas, 130 women with all types of cancer, as well as oncologists, nurse practitioners, social workers and world class speakers (many of whom are cancer survivors) met to recover, restore and reenergize.

One of the definitions of “retreat” is “a place of refuge.” To that I would add: A retreat is also the people who share the refuge with you. Together you “re treat” one another again and again, nourishing your spirits and inspiring your souls. I don’t know of another environment where total strangers become instant sisters who understand and mirror one another’s deepest hopes and fears before they’ve even said “hello.”

Women from around the country with all types and stages of cancer came to this retreat, and one, as she put it, was beyond her “expiration date.” There were women, who thought they were the only ones in the world with cancers no one could pronounce, who met other women with their exact same cancer. We shared our pain, our hopes, even our sadness that some of us may not be here this time, next year, but there was no pity; no loss for words. Each of us came from the same place of unspoken understanding.

We danced; we cried. We cried a lot, but there was more laughter in these four days than many people experience in years. How do I explain cancer humor? Perhaps by giving you a quote from cancer superheroine Heidi Adams, founder of Planet Cancer and Senior Director of Grass Roots Engagement for LIVESTRONG asked: “Is it OK to be buried in blue jeans?”

Each time we came together, whether at meals or to listen to speakers, we met new women and shared our stories. After dark, some of us gathered around an outdoor fireplace in our pajamas, made smores, laughed “samore” and talked with oncologists who, at that moment, were knowledgeable friends with answers. At the end of four days, our collective stories were as healing as any surgery, chemo or radiation. Each of us left with tears of joy and thanksgiving for having met others who shared “our same aquarium,” and who empowered us and gave us hope.

Started by US Oncology, Inc., the largest community-based cancer care and research network in the nation, the Life Beyond Cancer Foundation’s primary purpose is to financially assist cancer patients with many of their everyday living expenses. In addition, US Oncology, along with other caring companies, underwrites most of the cost of the Life Beyond Cancer Retreat, making it affordable for many women who want to come. I think I speak for everyone at this year’s retreat when I tell Dr. Lloyd Everson, Vice-Chairman and Board Member of US Oncology, that Living Beyond Cancer may be one of the best decisions US Oncology will ever make. The executive director and her planning committee created an event none of us wanted to leave. Even after we’d checked out of our rooms, we sat on sofas and chairs, camped out on the lobby floor, not ready to say goodbye.

If you’re female and have/had cancer, whether you’re Stage 1 or Stage 4, mark your calendars for next November and go to next year’s Retreat. If the Life Beyond Cancer Retreat doesn’t open a door in your heart that helps you embrace life, I’m not sure anything will.

 

Do any of you know a man who’s had breast cancer? For the majority of you who answered “no,” please allow me to introduce Allen Wilson, this year’s Chair for the Houston 2011 Komen Race for the Cure®. A two-time breast cancer survivor, and an adventurer who embraces life in every sense of the word, Allen is a cautionary tale for every man. Yes men get breast cancer, too, and just like women, men need to do regular self-breast exams.<PREVIEWEND>

Even though Allen Wilson had been aware of the lump under his right nipple, it took colliding with his son while playing basketball to get his attention. “That really hurt,” he told me. “Two days later I had a mammogram. It’s amazing what those technicians can do with so little tissue to work with.” Shortly there after, in 2003, Allen had a mastectomy.

When Allen told a woman he worked with that he’d just had a mastectomy, she thought he said “vasectomy” until he raised his shirt, showed her his bandages and his drainage tubes and grinned. Like everything else Allen Wilson does in life, he’s handled his breast cancer with humor and determination. After his hair began to fall out during his first go-round with chemo, his sons, Robert and Michael, gave him a Mohawk and painted one side of it red and the other side green for their family Christmas photo.

After his mastectomy and prescribed rounds of chemotherapy were over, Allen began training for his climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro where, in 2006, he placed pink ribbons as summit markers. The same year, Allen’s breast cancer returned in the location of his mastectomy scar, and another surgery and some really “serious chemo” and radiation ensued. “Maintenance,” he calls it, with no reference to the word “recurrence.”

Allen’s cell phone is a breath-taking photo album of not only his climbs on world famous mountains around the world, but of he and his wife, Lisa, skydiving and their 2010 participation in the second Egyptian Komen Race for the Cure® around the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids of Giza. The same year, Allen also spoke at the inaugural Komen Race for the Cure® in Jerusalem.

Allen is only the second man I’ve met who’s had breast cancer. The first male breast cancer survivor I met was actor, Richard Roundtree, better known for his role as super-cop “Shaft,” the ABC miniseries Roots as well as Desperate Housewives and his recurring role on Gray’s Anatomy. In 1993, Richard found a lump about the size of a pencil eraser in the shower while filming a movie in Costa Rica.

“When I was diagnosed, nobody gave me any information about breast cancer or how to get through treatment. No pamphlets, no cautions about what to eat, what not to eat, how to take care of myself, nothing," Richard told me a few years ago when he wrote a piece for my book, Breast Cancer Sisterhood, A Guide to Practical Information & Answers to Your Most Intimate Questions. "I was only told I needed a mastectomy and six months of chemotherapy, so that’s what I did.”

Richard Roundtree and Allen Wilson are great role models and reminders for every man to do monthly self-breast exams. Even though less than one percent of breast cancers occur in men, the incidence is on the rise. Because men delay seeing their doctors if they notice a lump or something unusual in the breast area, their breast cancers are often diagnosed when the disease is more advanced. As a result, their prognosis may not be as good had they found it earlier.

To Allen and Richard, from the men you've helped, along with the wives, sisters, mothers and daughters who love them, we thank you.

 

“In New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of,
There’s nothing you can’t do,
Now you’re in New York,
These streets will make you feel brand new,
Big lights will inspire you,
Let’s hear it for New York, New York, New York

One hand in the air for the big city,
Street lights, big dreams all looking pretty,
No place in the world that can compare,
Put your lighters in the air, everybody say yeah, yeah,
Yeah, yeah

In New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of,
There’s nothing you can’t do,
Now you’re in New York,
These streets will make you feel brand new,
Big lights will inspire you,
Let’s hear it for New York, New York, New York”

This moving tribute to the people of New York City and the 911 first responders has touched my heart in ways I couldn’t have predicted.<PREVIEWEND> It’s reminded me of the collective pain our nation still feels and the selfless ways total strangers put the lives of others before their own. It’s also made me think about breast cancer families and the strangers who became our caregivers, men and women we came to rely on to keep us alive. In no way do I mean to compare 911 to having breast cancer, or vice versa, but all of us have been touched in small every day moments by loss, illness, war and death.

Profound loss changes who we are: We approach the future with the knowledge our life will never be the same again; we realign the way we see ourselves not only in the context of our own lives, but in relationship to our communities and those who share our common experiences. While we can never return to the days before the terrorist attacks on our country, or the cancer that ravaged our bodies, these tragedies sharpen our determination to survive.

Where were you when you heard about September 11^th? Where were you when you were diagnosed with breast cancer? How did September 11^th change you? How did breast cancer change you? Did they make you stronger?

As a whole, Americans and those who gravitate to the opportunities and freedoms our shores represent are resilient. It takes a lot to get us down and on our way back up, we grab the hands of those next to us and bring them up with us. A loss of the magnitude of 911 or cancer is incalculable, but generations to come will bear witness and take inspiration from our stories. They will use the lessons we’ve learned as the basis and strength to survive their own crisis.

While my thoughts are of those brave 911 men and women and their families, as well as my breast cancer sisters and their families, I’m also thinking of my own recent loss. My precious James. May God bless you and your families each and every day, and may you take time out of each day to be there for someone else. I thank you for being there for me.