Relay for Life

Yesterday, May 31st was the National Cancer Society of America’s Relay for Life. I’ve never done anything like this before, but my good friend Karen Thiessen is dealing with her fourth outbreak of melanoma. She decided to sponsor a team, and well, everybody loves Karen! She had a huge support system with her.
It was quite a thing to be a part of. I’ll try not to be too long-winded about it, but here goes:

It was held at Cascade High School. Karen had to have a booth set up (as did all 40 teams) with some kind of fund raiser going on in each booth the whole time. Karen did silent auction gift baskets. I think she had 15-17 baskets, most of them quite huge. Everything in them was donated. From the silent auction alone, she raised well over $900. Wow.

The Relay took place on the running track. Almost all of the booths were on the inside ring of the track. There was a bandstand, speakers, several different bands, etc. Our support role was to collect monies beforehand, and walk. Each team had to have a representative on the track at all times – for 24 hours. There were 40 teams in this particular relay. In the evening, they put out white slightly-larger-than-lunch-bag size bags that people had decorated with names of someone they wanted to honor or remember. Each bag cost $5 to enter. They had a block of wood in the bottom with a light stick inside. A luminary. I kid you not, those bags were lined up side to side, sometimes touching even, all the way around the inside track of that racetrack. That’s a quarter of a mile, I’m told. I can’t even begin to imagine how many there were. As I walked around and around the track, looking at the bags, I was overwhelmed with the stories represented. Some indicated a message of “miss you”, while others communicated a message of “keep the faith” or “there’s always hope”.

Aunt Lorraine and her new husband came up and Lorraine and I walked for an hour and a quarter, from 11:45a to 1:00 p. I felt tired but fine. But today. . . Today I stood up from a counter stool and my knees buckled under me. Three times! I had to literally catch myself on the counter or I’d have been on the floor. I feel a little like a light case of shin splints as well. But it’s minor. Anyway, Lorraine and Bob went home afterwards, and I went to my home. I hadn’t really known what to do with the bags, having never done anything like this before, and having no confidence in my creative self. But I came home and did up a bag. When dad got home from work, we went back to the field and I paid my $5 to enter a bag. We chatted for a bit, and left. At 10pm, we went back to the field for the luminary ceremony. It was really quite touching, seeing all those bags, and again, wondering about the stories behind each. It was poignant timing in that our church lost a 50-something fella to cancer on Wednesday. His name was added to more than one bag that I saw.

Kaydee told me this morning that Karen raised well over $4000 with her booth and donations. And last night Karen said that there had been a glitch in her new experimental treatment she was to be starting, but that it has been un-glitched, and she will be getting information from the doctors about starting treatment some time this week. I have to wonder, melanoma being the most deadly form of cancer, what will the bags from her friends and family say on them next year?

Please pray for Karen and her family as she prepares to start a new treatment. Her spirit is amazing. And she is at complete peace.