Touched by breast cancer, they share their stories

Thirty thousand pairs of sneakers. Thirty thousand pink ribbons. Thirty thousand people trying to beat something.

If nothing else, Sunday's Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure was really 30,000 stories. Tales of people whose lives have been somehow touched by breast cancer. Thousands of reasons for showing up to walk or run on a rainy, cold, dreary morning.

Stories of bravery and pain and love. Of courage and collapse, triumph and loss.

Amanda Brennan's story is about her mom. Debra Sawyer's is about fighting. Bob Smith's is about being different. And Terri Buser's tells of determination.

A grieving daughter finds her strength

With the family planting one pink dogwood in the yard every year their mother survived breast cancer, Joan LaCasse Brennan liked to joke that one day she'd be a princess in a leafy, flowering grove.

But just four trees in, Brennan succumbed to the disease in August.

Days later, her 12-year-old daughter, Amanda, wiped away her tears and got busy. If she could pay for enough research, she thought, maybe no one else's mom would die.

All by herself, she approached her swim club and asked permission to have an event there. She recruited volunteers and persuaded local Churchville businesses to donate $1,000 worth of door prizes. Michael Phelps sent her a signed magazine cover and Kimmie Meissner actually showed up at the swim-a-thon, which raised thousands of dollars.

Thanks to a bake sale and more online donations, Amanda, a petite thing with curly brown hair and happy eyes, has raised more than $7,000 for Komen, making her one of the top fundraisers in all of Maryland.

She and her dad ran in the organization's 5K Sunday, in the pouring rain, in her mom's honor.

Before she died, Joan Brennan raised $100,000 for Komen. That's one thing Amanda learned from watching her during those sick years. She also learned about good days and bad days, the importance of making memories, the difference between "stage one" and "stage three," and how much can change in a year.

"If she knew, I think she would be very proud of me," Amanda says of her efforts, adding: "She knows."

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Deciding to fight instead of giving in

When Debra Sawyer felt the lump on her breast in 2008, she kind of knew. "We have that woman thing," she says. "You just know."

Even so, when the doctor called back with the news, she sat dazed in traffic, shocked to hear the actual words.

"All I could think," she says, "is I'm going to die."

But soon, the Baltimore City clerk of courts snapped out of it. She decided to be, as she puts it, "a warrior." A breast cancer warrior.

She bulldozed through the Internet looking for information, mainly hoping to find some description of chemotherapy that didn't make it sound like sheer hell.

"There was nothing," she says, dryly. "I'm not going to pretend it was a walk in the park."

Before her hair could start to thin, she asked her husband, Kirk, to shave her head. And with that newly exposed pate, she wanted to go out to dinner, show it off.

"I can't tell you I was happy, but I did well with that part, I think," says Sawyer, a 48-year-old mother of three who lives in White Marsh. "I'm cramming everything into healthy time so if this thing comes back, I have no regrets."

She's still on medicine, not quite sure if she's beaten back the disease. This was her first Race for the Cure. Last year, on chemo, she watched it on TV from her bed.

Sawyer is particularly determined to preach the gospel of mammograms to as many women as she can -- especially black women.

Many African-American women, she says, think that "God will take care of it."

"No, sweetie," she says. "You have to do something. Take care of your ta-tas. ...

"Any woman that will listen, I'm going to talk about it."

-- Jill Rosen

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Finding a cure, one T-shirt at a time

The T-shirt logo is a breast cancer ribbon that morphs into a paved highway bridge, under construction, alongside a crane hoisting the words, "Find the Cure."

Breast cancer survivor Terri Buser says the logo signifies that eradicating the disease is a work in progress. And she's dedicated to such work: An asphalt sales representative, she created the logo and sells the T-shirts to help her raise money for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Buser is the founder of Contractors for the Cure, a group of friends, co-workers, neighbors and customers that she has enlisted to bolster her fundraising efforts.

After a successful lumpectomy in 2002, she took part in the Komen Race for the Cure, then got so hooked that she began raising money for the foundation.

Buser came up with T-shirts that are worn by Contractors for the Cure members during the race. Then she persuaded contracting companies to pay for advertising space on the shirt -- anywhere from $100 to $5,000.

This year, she has raised $18,000.

"The most we've raised in a given year, and that was two years ago, was close to $40,000," said Buser, 54, of Monkton, a sales representative for 35 years. "Being out in sales, I deal with a lot of different customers. I put a team together and a brochure that said, 'Hey, if you give me so much money, I'll be happy to put your name on the T-shirt.' "

She says she's found that even in a tough economy, people are willing to give.

"People are generous," she says, "and they realize that cancer doesn't stop if you have a bad economy or a good economy."

-- Joe Burris

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'I never realized how rare I was'

"Dear Dad," reads the note from Robert L. Smith's youngest daughter, which is pinned to the wall in his office. "I hop you get beder."

Now, Smith is better. But a couple of years ago while the Ellicott City banker, then 39, was getting dressed, his wife noticed his left breast was bigger than the right.

"It's probably nothing," his doctor said. "If you were a woman I'd tell you to be worried," another doctor added.

And finally, when more tests came back two summers ago, yet another doctor told Smith: "Remember how I told you I had never had a male breast cancer patient? Now I have one."

Less than 1 percent of all breast cancer cases occur in men. And as Smith quickly learned, no one -- not even the medical field -- seems at ease handling a little testosterone in that sea of pink patients.

When he went for a mammogram, they threw a towel over his head and shouted, "Man alert!" as they led him to the machine.

When he got the card in the mail for his annual breast checkup, it was addressed to "Ms. Bob Smith."

"I never realized how rare I was," he jokes. "It just felt lonely."

He read about another guy with breast cancer in the local paper and, desperate for an understanding ear, Smith called him up. They shared stories over breakfast.

Doctors have told Smith, who's 44 now, his prognosis is excellent. The father of three redheaded daughters has come to accept his near-bald head, figuring his own hair might be a thing of the past.

Though his whole family planned to walk with Smith in Sunday's race, because his wife had a cold, they ended up staying home, while some of his team of 20 carried on in his name.

"I just want to be a spokesman for guys," he says. "I just don't want this dismissed as an impossibility. If you have a lump underneath your nipple, get it checked."

-- Jill Rosen