Thoughts on Completing the 3 Day from a 3-Day Virgin

Here’s how it’s like the first time: No matter what you’ve been told to expect, your own experience is unique. No matter how often you’re told you will come back a changed person, you will still be yourself. Also, I never actually cried, though I did laugh a lot.
Here’s how it’s just like the training months: No matter how many people are cheering and honking, by 2:30 p.m., you want to be finished. Walking 20 miles is a full day’s work and, as such, represents the full-time jobs needed by researchers, fundraisers, care givers to develop a vaccine, find a cure, raise the money, support the survivors and comfort the bereaved.
Here’s how it’s like it always is: An old friend who rejoices in my dark side just called. “You haven’t blogged yet,” she said. “Was it what you expected? When you first told me you were doing this, I thought: How clichéd.” Well, yes and no. One reason it’s taken me five days to gather my thoughts is because I’m still thinking in a mix of clichéd (but true) emotions: Amazing! Inspiring! Wonderful! Unbelievable – and snarky (but true) Grissy-isms: “By late Day 2, I was mowing down survivors and refusing to wave.” “My God, I’m still a bitch, only now I want be applauded constantly. Non-stop cheering was the heroin I discovered in St. Petersburg. Uh oh, now what?”
Here’s how it’s just like high school: How proud I was that I and my three pacing cohorts came in each day ahead of much thinner and much younger women. But oh, how I wish I’d done a Clinton & Stacy when outfitting myself. It took a candid shot by Channel 10 to show me what a Glamour Don’t knee-length shorts really are. Believe me, if I’d only looked in a 360 mirror, I’d have lived with a little chafing. Ah well, next year.
The unexpected grace: Gratitude. By day 2 I realized just how strong an impact our crew was having on my enjoyment and comfort and, therefore, how much a cancer survivor depends on the kindness and willingness of others to serve their basic needs.
The unexpected souvenir: I picked up every pin, necklace, washable tattoo and pink shoelace offered me. What’s hanging on the corkboard in my cube is this: My 3Day lanyard. Why? Because all I have to do is look at this to know the most important lesson I’ve learned this year. It’s a lesson I’ve had unarticulated in my heart since my friendship with my old friend Lindsay Dirkx Brown (who died of breast cancer in 1991) began back in 1972 but which I saw on a sign at camp and attributed to Paulo Coelho: “When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.”
How I’m different: I haven’t had a drink since Monday’s after party. I’m quite the post-work wino. No, it’s not that my two glasses a night is such a lot of wine but that it’s so hard for me not to have them. But not this week. A new kind of hangover? Too soon to tell.

My Big Fat 3Day Hangover

OMG
More to come, but the above is my one arty photo. Probably sucks, but there's something true in its bleary run of colors. Essentially, this is how camp looks through the tears of a walker grateful for day's end, her team's enthusiasm, the cheering groups along the way who urged us forward with myriad high-fives and constant thank-yous, lively music and standing ovations. Bless the little girls who, if Tampa Bay's $4.5 million in contributions and 1,500 or so walkers have anything to say about it, will never know a round of chemo or the unwilling skull girdle of a bad wig.

Thanks to Katie T., Atlanta route trainer who over-prepared me. Not a single blister!