Kathy LaTour Dallas, Texas United States Amazon Heart Thunder United States 2008 Experienced Rider Click Here to Donate Now!

Wow – I am so excited to take part in this ride and to meet all the amazing women who have signed up. I have always said that one of cancer’s gifts has been meeting the women who have battled this disease – those who have won and those who have lost.

I am probably the old timer in this group. I was diagnosed at age 37 in 1986 and had a 1-year-old daughter named Kirtley. I tell other women now that worse than losing a breast or throwing up for hours on end from chemotherapy was the idea that I would not be here to raise her. Well the universe has deemed that I would since Kirtley graduates from college in May 2008.

It’s been an amazing ride for the past 21 years. I have finally come to the realization that, while cancer did not take my life, I have given it willingly. The mission in life that I used to ask for as a child turned out to be breast cancer, because the day I was diagnosed, my life changed in more ways that just physically. Of course, that has been my message. Because when I was diagnosed no one talked about it, there were no pink ribbons and no one even considered that in 2008 women would ride motorcycles to bring attention to breast cancer.

For the details. My cancer was 2.5 centimeters and I had one large malignant lymph  node. I often thank that little sucker for holding onto the cells like it did. I had four months of chemotherapy and three years of terror until my surgeon started the first support group in her office. It was from other survivors that I learned that there are worse things than dying – like not living every day until you die.

The last time someone introduced me as a speaker and I listened to my own bio, I got to the microphone and said, “you could say it was cancer as a career move.”

Since the diagnosis, I have had many stages of reaction and resolution. I had to do my own work first, which, because of the need to believe I would live, took me three years. When I say the need to believe I would live, it refers to fear of recurrence, which was so hard for me because there was no one to talk to. After that was finally resolved, I began working for breast cancer in every way I could. I wrote a book, I helped start a nonprofit and then another one, and now I am editor-at-large for two cancer magazines CURE: Cancer Updates, Research and Education and Heal: Living Well After Cancer. A journalist by training, I feel that I am the luckiest person in the world to be able to merge my vocation and my calling.

I also do a one-woman show called “One Mutant Cell,” which tells the story of my ongoing journey with cancer. I say ongoing because it still continues. I was diagnosed again in November 2007 with DCIS in the left breast and had a second mastectomy.

I started riding in 2003 to take part in another breast cancer fundraiser and to mark one thing off my bucket list. I used to ride on the back of my brother’s Honda all through high school. It was the only way I got anywhere. And I loved it. I wanted my own bike, but girls did not ride their own bike back then and so — ta da. Here I am. Because one of the greatest things cancer gives us is the eternal answer to every comment – You had cancer and you ride a motorcycle?

It’s because I had cancer that I ride a motorcycle.

Can’t wait.

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