October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and you would be hard-pressed to find someone who has not been affected by this deadly, unfair, nasty, disease that affects many of us at the hearts of our families. Just this morning, I ran into one of our reps at the local grocery store and in jest I said to him “I haven’t seen you in a few weeks, I thought that you had been fired.” He responded that he had been out because his 34-year old sister, mother of two young children, had passed away from breast cancer. Her fight started in February 2016 (yes, this year) and ended just a short while back. He explained “first it was discovered during a mammogram, then it went to her lymph nodes, then to her bones and then she ended up in hospice care and didn’t last too long once there.” Just like that, a young mother taken from us and more importantly, taken from her two young children.
About 1 in 8 U.S. women (about 12%) will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime. In 2016, an estimated 246,660 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in women in the U.S., along with 61,000 new cases of non-invasive (in situ) breast cancer (breastcancer.org). This disease will sneak up on you when you least expect it and I personally would like to do everything in my power to rid it from the world in which I live in.
Personally, this disease has affected my extended family. After speaking with my rep this morning, I choose not to identify him by name for privacy reasons, I started to think, what if that was me? What if my sister (I have 2), or my wife or God forbid, one of my children were to be affected by this disease? We always believe that “this can’t happen to me” until it does. Well, I refuse to be an innocent bystander when I have been put in a position where I can help. And help I will.
Not too long ago,Becky, our front desk supervisor, approached me about Breast Cancer Solutions, a local charity based out of Lake Forest, CA. This organization focuses on the day-to-day lives of those living with this disease. Their mission statement reads: Breast Cancer Solutions was created in 1998 to eliminate barriers to breast cancer treatment for patients experiencing financial hardship. Since inception, the support of individuals, companies, and foundations has helped us assist over 3,700 clients who would have otherwise delayed, stopped or been denied treatment. That’s a pretty powerful statement. Charles Dickens once wrote “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” So I present the “Pink Goggles” initiative.
The “Pink Goggles” initiative that I am proposing is to sell pink goggles in the month of October and have most of the proceeds go to Breast Cancer Solutions, so that they can continue to do what they do best: help those in need when they need it most. The goggles are $10.00 each and make for a great pair of goggles that can be used at swim lessons or anywhere else that goggles are useful. You can find these goggles at Evolution Swim Academy Mission Viejo. This is the least that I can do to bring awareness to a disease that rips so many families apart.
$10.00 for pink goggles that will go to help people in their greatest time of need.
Have a great month of October, visit us at Evolution Swim Academy Mission Viejo, even if you are not an active member and purchase these great goggles. In the words of John Bunyon, “You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”
-Felipe Delgado