IN A WAY the Pink Ta Ta Fun Run started when a Mount Isa woman sat on her couch on New Years Day waiting for her children to come home.
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It’s the second time the annual fun run will be held at Lake Moondarra. Organiser Juanita Godwin started it last year to raise funds for the North West Breast Cancer Support Group.
She wanted to give back to the group which had helped her when she was recovering from breast cancer. It was at a time when she was in denial. In her mind the words ‘Juanita’ and ‘breast cancer’ were not structured in a sentence together.
It was on the couch in January, 2016, when Mrs Godwin felt a lump on a breast. It took the urging of a nurse who was part of her running group to convince her to have it checked faster, despite Mrs Godwin having cancer on her eyelid in 2014.
The general practitioner could not feel the lump and was hesitant, but still sent Mrs Godwin to have a mammogram and ultrasound. After a biopsy she learned she had breast cancer and that it was at at serious grade three stage. It reached her lymph nodes but had not spread to the rest of her body.
It was a tough time for the mother of three children. “I never thought the worst would happen. I never let myself think that or it would have been a spiral downwards,” Mrs Godwin said.
“I kept facing each day instead of the big picture.”
After the surgery the McGrath cancer nurse Mrs Godwin was seeing referred her to the North West Breast Cancer Support Group. It was during a six month period which she described as a time of denial.
“I could not tell myself I had cancer. It was a coping method I suppose,” Mrs Godwin said. “Even going to have chemo I could not say I had cancer. It was, I guess, too confronting.”
It was difficult for Mrs Godwin to remember exactly when she came up with the idea of the Pink Ta Tas Fun Run. She recalls that it would likely have been when she was sitting in chemotherapy.
Mrs Godwin used to be a part of IsaRats and wanted to use her contacts in the community to help fund-raise. She also noticed Gecko Outdoor Sports coordinator Alison Whitehead was organising a ‘Super Hero Scramble’ sporting event for children, and thought she could host a similiar event.
“It was exciting because we were making something good out of a bad situation,” Mrs Godwin said. More than $5000 was raised for the support group.
The second fun run will be held on Sunday morning and will likely raise more money than the previous year.
Last year there had been related raffles and morning teas besides the fun run but this year there had been increased sponsorship support of more than $5000. There was also $1000 in prizes.