Making Strides - Patt Mosley/Team Battelle

My dear Family & Friends,
 
I am sending this email out to you today as an official "survivor" of Breast Cancer.  Having completed my treatment exactly a year ago today, I am thrilled to be able to be here today, healthy, cancer-free and am finally able to join in the fight against Breast Cancer and share in the collective voice in the effort to generate more awareness.
 
As many of you are aware, last fall, my family and I made the life-changing decision to move back to the Tri-Cities, Washington in order to be closer to our family and also to give ourselves the ability to kick-start our lives anew.  In looking forward and not back, I have cleared my regular check-ups, found a fantastic new job, and we are en route to owning our new home in just a few short days!  Time does move by and FAST!
 
However, even with all these new life changes, I cannot trivialize the last 3 years of our lives while I went on my "journey" through breast cancer and given that, I chose to volunteer my time this year with the Amercian Cancer Society's Making Strides Against Breast Cancer event.  Though I've never felt that I would ever be interested in volunteering or championing the cause other than on my own personal soap box, several reasons prompted me to make the decision to participate:  primarily, a newly found friend of ours was diagnosed in early January with a rare form of appendix cancer.  Due to the LACK of awareness, knoweldge and visibility of this cancer, she has struggled with both the diagnosis and the lack of information she is requiring in order to make those heart wrenching decisions on surgeries and follow-up treatment.  Hearing this made me relook at how things progressed for me during the time I was diagnosed and then all the way through treatment and I realized that without voices, donations, support, and advocacy from people like you, I too would have found myself in the same situation as her where the future was unknown with regards to what steps I needed to take in order to SAVE MY LIFE! 
 
In addition, just a few weeks ago, I was once again, notified by a personal friend who wanted to call me directly to let me know that she had just been diagnosed with Breast Cancer - this friend was instrumental during my treatment, as she organized collections, brought food for our family, and called me every week or so just to check in.  I read a statistic earlier this month that said every 1 in 8 women you know, would be diagnosed with Breast Cancer.  For me, make that 5 out of 8 in less than 3 years...it is definitely time for me to stand up and share my story, contribute my time and effort into creating more awareness for Breast Cancer and find a cure so that less women and men need to go through what those of us who are survivors had to. 
 
So this brings me back to this email - I need your support and I will not be shy about asking for it!  The fight for my life doesn't end after an event, I have to keep fighting every day to live so that I can be here for my family.  But if during that fight, I can benefit those with my efforts, then all the better!  I truly believe that I would not be here today if it wasn't for the volunteers that donate, support and drive all the various events to finding a cure for cancer. 
 
Please, if you can donate, it doesn't matter how little or how much, and you can do it anonymously as well, know that all the proceeds DO go to Breast Cancer research and programs through the American Cancer Society.  Also, if you donate online, you will get a receipt that you can write off next year.
 
If you want to be virtual team member, GREAT!  I would love to have you join my team, Team Battelle (still working on the actual name though) - we can list you as a team member, and I can send you a team shirt.  I am the Team Captain, as well as a committee member on the Making Strides Event - yes, it is a lot of extra time spent, but I feel it is worth every minute, if it means I can help make a difference.
 
The event is on May 8th, the Saturday of Mother's Day weekend, at Howard Amon Park in Richland, Washington - it is a 5K walk ONLY (thank god!), and it will definitely be a time of celebration, tears and joy - though in someways, it will look like we all drowned in a bottle of Pepto (so the Pink thing I am still struggling a bit with...)
 
Here is the link:  Making Strides - Patt Mosley/Team Battelle
 
To close, I want to take this time to thank each and every one of you for giving me my life back.  If it wasn't for your support, love, prayers and thoughts, it would have been a rougher journey for me and I am humbled and honored to be able to have you all on my side during my battle.  So I am asking again, for you to stand by my side as we continue forward with this fight towards such a terrible disease and in finding a cure for once and for all!
 
Your servant,
Survivor,
Patt Mosley
 
Supporting the Fighters,
Admiring the Survivors,
Honoring the Taken,
And never giving up HOPE!

First, Happy Chinese New Year, Happy Valentine's Day and especially a very happy Birthday to Gannon!  He turned 5 on February 23rd - neither Duke nor I can get over the fact that we are now the proud owners of a FIVE year old!  Amazing...

So earlier tonight, for some reason, Duke, Gannon and I walked through some of our photos that we took during our time in Singapore.  Several things were very prominently featured back then:

1. Gannon was SO damn cute & chubby!!!!

2. I was so skinny!  (Duke commented that the cancer had been eating away at me by then...)

3. Duke was so skinny - well as skinny as he could be, but he was definitely in his physical prime!

4. Gannon was SO damn cute & chubby!!!!

Even though I had a rough go with regards to my job, we actually really enjoyed our time in Singapore and living overseas.  I miss the friends we made, I miss our maid, I miss the lifestyle and I miss the ability to hop on a plane and travel to another country, cheaply and quickly!  I think the humidity is definitely the ONE thing I am glad to get away from - in looking at some of the pictures, the amount of sweating Duke & Gannon did was amazing. LOL

But I do believe things happen for a reason - 3 months after we moved back, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and 2 years later, the whole landscape of InFocus changed to where I ended up getting laid off.  So I think it was a good thing that we had moved back to the US but oh how we do miss the fun times we had there!

Time is flying by with us - we are scheduled to close on our house next Wednesday (yeah!) though the whole financing has been kind of a pain.  Oh, and the other thing we miss a LOT and that we notice is somewhat missing here in the US, and especially (no offense) the Tri-Cities - Customer Service!  I can't tell you how many times Duke and I have encountered a complete and utter lack of customer service here in the Tri-Cities...what has happened to providing good and quality customer service these days?  Do people just not care?  Is it the economy?  We went to some local "diner", I think it was called Rosie's to get some ice cream recently and the minute we walked in the two gals at the counter just acted so bizzarely that even Duke picked up on it.  The way they looked us up and down, and then talking to each other about US in front of US and then putting on some kind of attitude when telling us about the ice cream flavors.  It was almost creepy, but they just kept up this weird behavior all the way through our purchase.  We've been to local restaurants where the waitress forgot about us and was serving food to everyone else around us (we were there first), and we couldn't catch her attention until finally someone else came by.  Is it because I'm Asian and with a white guy?  LOL 

Okay, time to sign off...will post pictures next!