Hooves for a Cure
The event is open to anyone.
Registration is from 9 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. at Caesar Creek State Park, Horseman's Camp, 8570 E. Ohio 73, Waynesville.
Donation is $10 per person.
For info: www.horsenanny.com/ohiohooves4acure
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This article is part of our month-long focus on breast cancer. To learn more or find ways to help, go to our Pink Edition Page.
Both Joyce Strain and her pal, Abby, are excited about the “Hooves Ride for Cancer,” a special event taking place Saturday, Oct. 3, at Caesar Creek State Park.
Abby, an appaloosa horse, will carry her owner on a journey designed to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Similar rides are taking place across the country.
Strain, a medical lab technician at Southview Hospital, has faced a much less pleasant journey over the years — a battle with breast cancer.
Diagnosed in 1997, the Bellbrook woman admits she’d ignored her radiologist’s advice to repeat a suspicious mammogram. Like many women, even after discovering a large lump in her breast, she put off a visit to her doctor.
“I waited and, of course, ended up with a bunch of positive lymph nodes to go with that lovely lump,” says Strain. As a high-risk patient, she was advised to undergo a bone marrow transplant at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton in 1998. That treatment is rarely used today for breast cancer, because of medical advances.
“I’m convinced it helped me,” says Strain, 61, who is thriving and works two part-time jobs.
Strain says the experience caused her to come face-to-face with her own mortality.
“I did experience a short period of depression after the diagnosis,” she says. “I wouldn’t buy new clothes, or make plans very far in the future. Then I realized I may die. But I wasn’t going to die that day, and probably not the next. So each day, and this only lasted for maybe a couple of weeks, I’d keep telling myself that. I guess that’s when I also decided to keep working, and not let the cancer change the way I lived my life.”
The treatments, she says, weren’t as bad as she’d feared. She continued to work through the chemotherapy, taking a couple of extra days off during the weeks she had treatment.
Strain says she was determined not to let her cancer diagnosis change her life.
“I wasn’t going to give it that power over me,” she says. “It was a pain in the butt, and a huge scary disease, but after getting over the initial shock of the diagnosis, I was going to fight it.”
The experience did change her life in some positive ways. Strain says having cancer made her “quit stressing about the small stuff, and be thankful for life.”
“Everything is a bit prettier, grass greener, sun brighter, loved ones more precious. It definitely changes you when you face your own mortality.”
Advice from Joyce Strain
“If you suspect you may have a problem, don’t wait to have it checked. Early diagnosis is always best.”
“With new medical discoveries constantly being made, new breast cancer treatments, as well as breast-saving surgeries, this disease is a much smaller enemy than it was when I was diagnosed.”
“It’s certainly not fun but it’s something that can be beaten, and life does go on after it, and sometimes, it can even be better. Much like the country song that says ‘Live Like You Were Dying.’ We’re only here for a short time, appreciate what you have while you have it.”
Contact Meredith Moss at (937) 225-2440 or MMoss@Dayton DailyNews.com.
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