An EMOTIONAL walk

This last week my oldest son put all of his effort into collecting donations for the Relay for Life walk for cancer.  By the time he was done with a week full of trying he collected $350.00!!  We were so proud of his hard work and determination and the lessons he was learning earning this money for The American Cancer Society.  The day had come for the actual Relay For Walk in town and I was super excited to go walk  as much as I could.  However when we got there I have to say it was a bit of a disappointment.  I have been to Relay for Life in the past and the turnout this weekend was dismal to say the least.  There were probably a total of 20 people walking and sometimes even less.  With so many people affected somehow with cancer in their lives I was so sad to not see more supporters out there.  It was a very hot day but this was for a very special cause and that did not matter in my eyes.  I noticed right away that some of the vendors weren't there to walk but there to sell their products.  I thought I was missing something by seeing some of these people never walk a single time, what is the purpose of Relay for Life? I wanted to grab everyone by there hands and get them off their butts to start walking but that would not have been good ;) There were some teams that were walking in groups to support their family members or loved ones but our group was just me and all my boys. My husband grabbed my hand and we walked hand and hand the whole time :) I found myself getting very emotional while walking, thinking back to my diagnosis and even my big surgery just 4 months prior.  I had in my head based on others recovery that I would still be going through the recovery up to a year, I am so lucky!! Then my thoughts would go back to a post that I saw on a Pseudomyxoma-PMP Support Group earlier that morning.  It was a lady that had my exact disease and had been cancer free for 3 years but now it was back.  She was very bitter, you could tell, she stated she always knew this ugly creature would poke it's head back around and it didn't surprise her at all.  I gotta tell you I have a very love-hate relationship with the Internet.  When I first found out what I had I searched all day and night trying to find more out about my cancer. The problem is that it is so rare their is not much information or studies out there that you can actually rely on.  Many, many times I would tell my husband/my hero what I found while in full panic mode and he would have to walk me off that ledge by explaining that I do not know what I am reading and cannot put much trust in some of those studies due to the fact that every person has a different story to tell. He would literally do everything he could to keep me off the Internet at that point.  After my surgery and while in recovery I joined some support groups.  These are also very good and bad for me.  As you can see this one post that I read earlier in the day was stuck in my head as I was suppose to be focusing on walking!  My husband told me to look how far we have come and how lucky we are and to not to waste any time on what I had read.  He told me how excited he was for our future as the kids get older and all the plans we have.  I knew as he spoke those words that he truly believes this and I need to keep those positive thoughts in my head and not the fear that sometimes creeps up on me with one little situation.  We were told to go to the survivors tent to check in.  They gave my son a shirt because of his help in donations, then they told me that I got a purple survivor shirt.  That shirt brought on the tears, a single shirt could do that ?  I put this shirt on immediately and then started seeing all the other purple shirts around and thinking I wonder how their cancer journey has gone for them.  I had a real hard time seeing the younger kids with the purple shirts and that reminded me how lucky I was to get this and not my children!  So much was going through my head as we walked, It is a very emotional walk to say the least.  I was walking for me, my dear brother n law, the family we had lost and all the others that were in our same situation.  As me and my husband were walking hand in hand the whole way, the feelings were so powerful.  Who would think that walking could get to me so bad.... It was an emotional walk from the beginning to the end :)