On Sunday, October 2nd, I will be participating in the 2022 Boston Jimmy Fund Walk for Dana Farber.
Why am I participating? Because in early 2018, cancer knocked on my door and made me go through one of the toughest years of my life. A year I wasn’t prepared for.
I am now one of the lucky cancer survivors, and I'm very grateful for that, but cancer almost took away one of the activities I like to do most, swimming. After a year-long aggressive treatment that involved a double mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation on half of my chest and back, and reconstruction, I was left unable to swim for a couple of years. Fortunately, I recovered enough to get back into it, but with some of the range of motion issues I was left with, cancer also took away my speed.
Now, I no longer compete, but I continue to work very hard on improving and getting back into the physical fitness I once had.
This year, I'm participating in this walk with 2 of my swim mates, Victor Maldonado and Amy Schneider. Victor lost his girlfriend to this awful disease and Amy is a breast cancer survivor and my inspiration to get back into swimming strong.
We are walking in honor of Victor Maldonado's girlfriend, Alicia A. Figueroa Llinas, who passed away in June 2022 after battling metastatic breast cancer.
