“Consistent hard work leads to success”, Beth Calabotta
Join us for the 4th Annual Beth Calabotta One Mile, 5k or 10k Swim Challenge at Sheridan Swim Club in Quincy, Illinois on August 31st, 2019 at 7:00 a.m.! $25 per entry
Beth Calabotta was 49 years old, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a friend and an inspiration to so many. Beth lived with cancer for 8 years. She was originally diagnosed with local advanced cancer in 2008. In 2014, the cancer reoccurred and in 2015 she was found to have metastatic breast cancer. Beth died in the fall of 2017.
What is inspirational about Beth is her perspective.
Checks can be made to CANCER COUCH and mailed to:
Endurance Company
2002 Hedgewood Drive
Bloomington, IL 61704
The reason for sending a check is that all money raised through the swim is doubled by Cancer Couch, then doubled again! Your donation is actually 4x! We will present the check to the Cancer couch on the day of the swim.
This year the 2019 Beth Calabotta Swim Challenge will be held on Saturday, August 31, 2019. We are working hard to spread the word and increase funding for research aimed at Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC). The swim challenge is growing and will be represented across the country in Quincy, Illinois, Cheshire, Connecticut, Davenport, Iowa, Decatur, Illinois, and the Gulf Coast of Florida!
The Beth Calabotta Swim Challenge proudly partners with The Cancer Couch founded by Rebecca Timlin-Scalera. The Cancer Couch Foundation is a volunteer run, privately funded, non-profit organization. An unprecedented 100% of donations and event proceeds are matched by two generous donors and go directly to fund metastatic breast cancer research.
The Beth Calabotta Swim Challenge honors the legacy of Beth Calabotta and her commitment to finding better treatment for metastatic breast cancer (MBC). Beth lost her battle with MBC after a brave and courageous fight on March 28, 2017. The swim challenge recognizes her life, her legacy, and her passion.
One lives with a terminal illness by taking each day as it comes. In the beginning, I would tell myself that I wasn’t going to die that day, and that I wasn’t going to die the next day or even the next week. After time, the days started to accrue. Slowly but surely, plans were made; goals were set.
And so I learned that dying is really about living.
It’s about taking each day for what it is, piecing together something good in it, and moving on to the next day. It’s about planning for the future, while simultaneously planning for a future without you. It’s about understanding the limitations that being sick puts on you, accepting those constraints, and doing things anyway. It’s about simplifying your day to day life to enjoy more time to do the things that bring you joy. It’s about friends; it’s about family; it’s about health.
I also made a conscious decision to embrace this phase of my life. I wouldn’t have chosen to be in a position to have a short life, but I wasn’t given a choice. So I decided the one choice I could make is to do everything possible to make sure I enjoy my remaining time.
I openly discuss my prognosis, because for me, it is a necessary part of accepting where I am in life, so that I can make the most of it but not burden my loved ones with false hope or unfinished business. And I am actively and aggressively seeking treatment, because the cancer needs to be controlled for me to maximize my quality, if not quantity, of life.
Left unfettered, the dominant emotion would oscillate between anger, grief and sadness. In the eight years that I’ve lived with cancer, I’ve made many friends in the breast cancer community. And I have had more friends than I care to mention die of this awful disease, leaving behind young children, husbands, and dreams. Cancer is insidious.
Luckily, I’ve met a number of people who have helped me channel those emotions into action, so I am spending much of my time working to make sure that the future of metastatic cancer is not just a repeat of the past. I want a better tomorrow for those left behind. I want to educate people about what metastatic disease is. I want to get metastatic research funded and completed, because it is ignored. I want metastatic cancer to be a chronic disease, not a death sentence.
Because dying really is about living. And I plan to leave a pretty big wake when I’m gone.
-Beth
