Community Blog

July 18, 2008

We are Women see us Strong

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I know you have seen this before and some of you are part of this team. I wanted to share this with you because it is here in Morro Bay CA. I spend the summer here. These women, show just how strong they are!

Hugs

Survive Oars: Battling breast cancer one stroke at a time
Women unleash their inner dragon
Fifteen survivors, from ages 38 to 83, have found a mental and physical outlet in waters of Morro Bay
By Stephen Curran

The Central Coast Survive Oars, a regional dragon-boating team for breast cancer survivors, practices in Morro Bay Harbor.

Click any image to enlarge.

Central Coast Survive Oars is open to all breast cancer survivors. The team practices at 5:30 p. m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays through the end of July. For information, call Rose Marie Battaglia at 772-9463.

Exercising on a dock not far from the tourist shops and restaurants that line Morro Bay’s Embarcadero, the group of women in matching pink ball caps prepares to hit the water.

The members of the Central Coast Survive Oars dragon-boating team perform a series of stretches, led by their coach, Morro Bay occupational therapist Leslyn Keith. They share jokes, gentle teasing and memories of competitions past.

Then they push away from the dock, and the joking stops.

The women—all breast cancer survivors—plunge their paddles into the once-calm water. The small boat picks up speed rapidly, appearing to glide as Keith’s voice punctuates each stroke.

The paddlers’ ages span six decades, and they come from all over San Luis Obispo County. Some are lifelong athletes; others are novices drawn to dragon boating by the promise of a physical challenge and a chance to make new friends.

Were it not for the fact that each woman on the team is a breast cancer survivor, member Joanna Frawley said, they probably would never have met.

Frawley was diagnosed in 2004 and is undergoing chemotherapy following a recurrence of the disease.

“It’s such friendship and companionship,” said Frawley, a retired software engineer from Los Osos, who at 80 is the group’s second-oldest member. “We all have lives aside from cancer, but it’s cancer that’s brought us together.”

The team formed last year as an outlet for survivors seeking an alternative to traditional support groups. It now has 15 members ranging in age from 38 to 83.

Dragon boats — long, narrow crafts named for the decorative heads or tails often affixed to the vessels during competition — have become an unexpected symbol for many breast cancer survivors.

The sport as therapy grew from a 1995 study in which a researcher used dragon boating to measure the effects of exercise on women suffering from lymphedema, a kind of fluid buildup common in breast cancer survivors.

The report found that dragon boating greatly improved patients’ mental and physical well-being. Since then, its popularity among breast cancer advocacy groups has grown, with teams forming around the world.

Keith learned of the idea from one of her patients, who had seen a boating event in Australia.

She enlisted Enhancement Inc., a local nonprofit organization whose goal is to improve quality of life for breast cancer survivors, and six members of her teamrecently returned from the Arizona Dragon Boating Festival.

“It’s very good for recovery,” said Keith, a lymphedema therapist. “It’s not like sitting in a support group setting.”

Rose Marie Battaglia, who also competed with an Italian team in Rome, said the sport allows her and her teammates to move past their diagnoses without forgetting them.

Battaglia and her husband own Sub Sea Tours, the Morro Bay company that donates the canoe her team uses for practice.

“It takes you out of the victim role and puts you into survivor mode,” said Battaglia, who was diagnosed in 1998 and again in 2005. “And you gain quite a bit of respect for your upper body.”