Betties For Boobies

Today, hundreds of other bloggers are participating in a HUGE Breast Cancer Blogging Event! I am encouraging you to take a moment out of your day and donate $5 or $10 to Jacqueline Reitz, a Breast Cancer 3 Day walker. Jackie is a friend of mine and a fellow blogger based out of Dallas, and she's on the 3day team "Betties for Boobies". The hope is to get over 300 blogs, only time will tell how many have participated. Be sure to check out the www.bettiesforboobies.com blog for more information.

If just ONE of the readers from each of the 300 blogs takes a moment and donates $10, that will raise over $3,000.00 in the fight against Breast Cancer. WOW! So please help. Let's make this an enormous success! Check out Jackie's fund raising page at http://www.the3day.org/goto/jackier and make a donation. Best of all, it's totally tax deductible! Totals will be posted on the team's blog tomorrow...You'll be able to see what an impact we were all able to make!

Here is Jackie's personal story.

My name is Jackie Reitz. I'm 25 years old and I have 2 kids. Lily is 2 and Brendan is 5. My primary job aside from being a mother is as a photographer for Sixpence Weddings based out of Denton, Tx. I love to craft in all ways. I enjoy refinishing furniture, sewing, re-purposing clothing, and more. I blog about my crafts at www.thefabricfloozie.com, though that has fallen by the wayside lately as illness has struck our house recently in the form of RSV for Lily and Strep for Myself.
My passion in finding a cure for Breast Cancer began when I was 22 years old. I was 4 months pregnant with Lily when my OB found a large lump in my left breast. Since I was pregnant, there was little they could do more than an ultra sound and biopsy. The ultrasound showed us that the mass was a dense, fibrous tumor... not the cyst they'd hoped for. A core-needle biopsy showed us that the tumor was "likely benign" but that we would need to keep an eye on it every 6-12 months forever, or until it went away on it's own, which they sometimes do. While we are still watching it, I had to endure many difficulties through this journey. Including being denied for health insurance because of a tumor that "could become" Breast Cancer. And being turned away for a mammogram because I was "too young" to have breast cancer. By the way, this is a horrible myth. I've learned that not only is Breast Cancer on the rise in young women, but Breast Cancer in women under 30 is typically more aggressive than ANY other range of Breast Cancer and, more often than not, will result in death. I pushed forward, knowing that I didn't have just myself to fight for any more. I had my daughter and my son. They need a Mom, and their Mom needs them. So while I came out of my experience healthy and with a great plan for the future, I know that most women my age who find tumors in their breasts aren't so lucky. I will walk or crew EVERY YEAR that I am physically able to until they find a cure.