Model Cancer Survivors

Cancer, you took your best shot at us! You took our hair, and at times, our dignity and serenity. Like a thief in the night, you crept into our bedrooms and purloined our sleep. If we were children, you stole our innocence. You turned our insides inside-out. You robbed us of our breasts, prostates, ovaries, and other body parts. You scarred us. You enshrouded our brains in a fog so thick, so murky, that we wondered if we would ever find our way out. We felt exhaustion we never believed possible. Now and then, we wept and trembled in fear as we searched for the strength to fight back. You were relentless, tireless, pitiless, and remorseless.

But despite all you did, and all you tried to do, you never took our courage, our will to live, our hopes and dreams, our strength, and most importantly, our spirit. While we might allow you a few body parts, those other things you may never take from us – now, or in the future.

You took your best shot – and we prevailed. And the 45 of us proved that again last night, when we strutted our stuff down the runway as models in the American Cancer Society’s “Cure by Design” fashion show. We survived just about every form of cancer there is: breast and prostate, ovarian and testicular, leukemia and lymphoma, brain, colon, cervical, bladder, and lung, among others. The women were all beautiful in their gowns, hairdos, and fashionable hairpieces. The men were all handsome, and the children, cute and innocent. As we walked proudly down the runway last night, we were model survivors!

The show was a lot of fun. I wish I could have taken pictures but that was not feasible, other than this one I got of the manly-men cancer survivors just before we went out before the audience: