The Bald and the Bellyful

Two weeks ago, my friend Jenny called me to tell me that she and her Mom wanted to do the upcoming City of Hope Walk for breast cancer. She asked me if I wanted to participate. I did. We decided that it would be most effective if I became the team captain as we assumed people would be more likely to donate money to me than to others, even if they were walking for me. Jenny tells me that her parents, sister and Aunt will be on our team and names a few of our friends who she knows want to walk as well. I go online to register. It's easy until I have to come up with a team name. I'm stumped. So is Jenny. I ask Boris if he can help. He rattles off a few suggestions like Due or Die which I reject (hello!?) and then he comes up with The Bald and the Bellyful. Perfect. I send out an email to almost everyone I can think of asking for money. Shortly after, a friend emails me and tells me to look at the City of Hope fundraising page. "Its been an hour and you've raised over $1000," she wrote. "I guess I'm not the only one who thinks of you as their hero." Within 2 hours, I raise close to $3000 and receive several emails from people who want to join our team.

The response to my request is overwhelming. Friends from high school and college who I have not spoken to in years receive my email through friends and several join my team. Strangers donate large sums of money. Current and ex-colleagues donate and spread the word. I get introduced to Hilary Swank (long story but bottom line is that she is the nicest person ever). It's staggering. I quickly become the top fundraiser for the Los Angeles walk (thanks in part to my teammates who have their friends and family donate directly to me) and The Bald and the Bellyful rises to third place for the team to raise the most money. We raise more than Sav-On and Albertsons. As a naturally and maybe insanely competitive person, I become obsessed with our fundraising efforts and check the City of Hope page often to make sure I'm in the lead at all times. I am. In the end, The Bald and the Bellyful raised just under $20,000. Not bad for my first fundraising endeavor. Perhaps I'll take up a new career when I'm finished with treatment.

When Miles was a few months old, I joined a babygroup. One of the women I met in that group has a gorgeous son 1 day younger than Miles. She and I have become very close and over the past year, Boris and I have become close with her husband as well. The best way to describe her husband is a friendlier, more compassionate, less annoying Larry David. He has a filter, he just chooses not to use it. He's sarcastic as hell and we get along famously. One night Boris and I are having dinner at their house and we start discussing Facebook. He wants to know why we're not Facebook friends. "I don't know," I say. "I guess you haven't asked to be my friend." He wants to know why I haven't asked him to be my friend. "Oh, I don't really do that," I explain. I just collect friends." He laughs. I don't remember what we discuss next, but I comment that I'm nice and he responds, "you are so not nice. Have you seen Mean Girls?" he asks. I have. "Well you're Rachel McAdams." She was the queen bee who always got what she wanted regardless of what she had to do to get it. I deny this vigorously. Rachel McAdams was mean and narcissistic. I'm nice. "You're not mean, but you're not nice. You're a queen bee. You get what you want," he says. Sure, in high school I had my moments, really, really long moments and lots of them, but I'm older, wiser...nicer. But her husband is insistent, "You're always in charge. It's nothing to be ashamed of but nice, that's not how I would describe you." Since I can't convince him that I'm secretly Mother Theresa, we both agree to disagree. I don't lose arguments and neither does he.

The conversation comes to mind as the donations and words of love and support pour in for my walk. I inform his wife that since I'm the top fundraiser for the City of Hope, people must be really scared of me, or they think I'm really nice. Or I suppose they could love and support me even if I am, or was, a Mean Girl. But then I realize that what he meant was that I'm spirited, passionate, unwilling to lose. If being someone who is unrelenting, even in my battle against this disease makes me a Mean Girl, then I'll take it. Because the truth of the matter is I do always get what I want. Right now, there's only one thing I want: to kick the crap out of cancer's ass and give birth to another perfect, healthy baby. And I never lose.

The morning of the walk, I put on my "In the Fight" Stand Up 2 Cancer t-shirt and bright orange scarf. I opted not to get a City of Hope t-shirt because I knew it couldn't possibly be cute (and I was right). I decide that although our walk is only a 5K, our team could use fuel and I go to get bagels for everyone. As I get in to the long line at the Bagel Factory, I suddenly realize that my "I'm pregnant with cancer" outfit for the walk may be a bit much for bagels. I run into a friend in line and he tells me I don't look like I have cancer, I just look orthodox (preggo with a head wrap). He's orthodox, so he'd know, although he says the fact that I'm talking to him is kindof a giveaway. I head home and slowly my teammates arrive at my house. We pile into a few cars and head off to Duarte with google maps in hand. There's no traffic on the series of freeways I've never been on (and neither has most of my team even though we're all from L.A.). We pass cities I've heard of like Montebello, but never knew where they were. As we're driving, I get a call from a young woman who Hilary Swank introduced me to. She was diagnosed with a triple negative tumor while 4 months pregnant and has a healthy, happy, perfect little girl who is nearing 5 months. She had emailed me the night before and in my response, I mentioned the City of Hope walk. She tells me that she and her husband are on their way and she hopes we can meet. I do, too.

Some of my teammates call to tell me they're stuck in terrible traffic waiting to exit the freeway. Boris decides to skip the traffic and informs us that he'll use his phone to figure out how to get us there. Miraculously (or maybe not so miraculous with an i-phone), he navigates us through Duarte and by dumb luck, we park 2 short blocks from the start line of the walk. As we're waiting for the rest of our team to park, one of our teammates, Heather, notices that several teams have signs and goes to an information booth to see if our team has one, too. The volunteer at the booth tells Heather that only teams of 10+ people have signs. Heather tells her that we not only have 10+ people but we are the number 3 team for raising funds and I was the number 1 fundraiser for the entire walk. "I was a little bitchy," Heather says, which is why I love her so. We find a sign that says The Bald and the Beautiful and decide that the City of Hope either screwed up our team name or team The Bald and the Beautiful mistakenly took The Bald and the Bellyful sign so we grab the sign, round up our team and proceed to the start line.

We notice that the volunteers at the start line for the 5k walk are rerouting the stragglers to the "Leisure Walk" entrance. We're told that they've closed the 5k route so they can open the street back up to cars. I don't think so. Neither does anyone else on my team and as we're told to go towards the Leisure Walk we all just nod, say okay, and walk through the cones and volunteers and start the 5k. If you've ever been to Duarte than you know that any walk can't possibly be scenic. Far from it. We're following the freeway. Breathing in the fumes and exhaust must be good for us. The buildings are impressive though and along the way we're met by volunteers who tell us to look up and waive to the patients watching from the windows above. Because we were late, we basically do the walk alone. While it was great to catch up with people I haven't seen in years, the walk wasn't emotional or inspirational to me in any way. Not like the Revlon walk my parents and I did a few years ago where we were surrounded by a sea of people who were survivors, walking in memory of friends and family members and where music played and speakers spoke and I was overwhelmed and awed. But I know several women who received treatment for breast cancer while pregnant at the City of Hope and am grateful for their research and facilities and am thrilled I could raise so much money.

Our team completes the walk as we're munching bagels. I get a call from the young woman Hilary (we're on a first name basis) introduced me to and we appropriately meet at the Survivor's Booth. It's so nice to put a face to her voice and we hug and compliment each other on how good we look given the circumstances and comment on what we normally look like. She looks at the sea of people standing around me and asks if they are all on my team. They are. I think there are 15 or 20 of us plus two munchkins in strollers. It's impressive and an honor. "Wow," she says. Wow is right.