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Guest column

Day 1: Packing a duffel bag full of hope for a cure

Thousands begin a 60-mile trek today to raise money for breast cancer research.

By JUDY LUDIN
Published October 7, 2005

	Judy Ludin. Times photo gallery

Judy Ludin, 47, is one of the thousands starting this morning on a 60-mile walk around the Tampa Bay area to fight breast cancer. She will write a daily diary. The Largo resident raised more than $5,000 for the cause by word-of-mouth and sending e-mails to family and friends. She was inspired by her sister, Debbie Sokolov, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in June. Two years ago, her mother, Marietta Drucker, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Ludin and her husband, Eric, a lawyer, have two sons, Joshua, 16, and Jacob, 14. She is an executive for public relations and communications for Menorah Manor, a geriatric center in St. Petersburg. Here is her first entry, leading up to today's start of the walk.

Many months ago I made the commitment to walk 60 miles in the Breast Cancer 3-Day benefiting the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Now, my months of training are finished.

I have been very busy gathering all of the things that I will need during the next few days: sunscreen, hats, many pairs of socks, many blister Band-Aids, moleskin to cover the blisters, water bottles, gel to massage sore muscles, ibuprofen - and more ibuprofen. The directions from my three-day coach say to make sure that the duffel bag that you bring is recognizable as there will be over 2,500 to choose from. My husband said that he would handle that for me.

I don't think I will have a problem finding my bag in the sea of duffels. He tied many pink ribbons around it, and topped it off with three pink bras! I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when he went to the store to buy those pink bras!

As I began putting things into my duffel, tears formed in my eyes. I wish I was packing for a vacation. I wish I didn't have to go on this walk to raise money for a disease, which affects so many people every second of every day. Maybe one day, a cure will be found, and the three-day walk will be a thing of the past. But until that happens, I, and so many other women, walk.

To raise money to fight breast cancer and to heighten awareness of the disease, more than 2,000 walkers wearing pink wristbands will cover 60 miles in three days starting this morning from Clearwater to St. Petersburg and then to Tampa, where the walk will end at Raymond James Stadium. Each walker raised at least $2,100.

While there have been numerous shorter walks and races, this weekend's Breast Cancer 3-Day will be a first for the Tampa Bay area.

Money raised will go to the National Philanthropic Trust Breast Cancer Fund and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation to fund breast cancer research, education, screening and treatment.

Opening ceremonies: 7 a.m., Coachman Park, 101 Drew St., Clearwater.

Cheering station: 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Seminole Youth Athletic Association Complex (far field from entrance), 125th Street and 90th Avenue N, Seminole.

Cheering station: 12:30 to 3 p.m., Tyrone Square Mall (by Dillard's), 6901 22nd Ave. N, St. Petersburg.

The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation was founded on a promise made between two sisters - Susan Goodman Komen and Nancy Goodman Brinker. Suzy was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1978, a time when little was known about the disease and it was rarely discussed in public. Before she died at the age of 36 in her home town of Peoria, Suzy asked her sister to do everything possible to bring an end to breast cancer. Nancy kept her promise by establishing the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in 1982 in Suzy's memory. From www.komen.org

An estimated 211,240 new invasive cases of breast cancer are expected to occur among women in the United States this year.

An estimated 40,410 women will die from breast cancer this year.

The five-year relative survival rate for women with localized breast cancer is more than 95 percent.

One woman is diagnosed with breast cancer every three minutes, and one woman will die of breast cancer every 13 minutes in the United States.

Only five to 10 percent of breast cancers are due to heredity. The majority of women with breast cancer have no known significant family history or other known risk factors.

In the United States today, there are more than 2-million breast cancer survivors.

Source: Breast Cancer 3-Day.

Times staff writer Waveney Ann Moore contributed to this report.

[Last modified October 7, 2005, 08:49:40]