/ 202 COVER STORY /
Dragon boat participants paddle on Tempe
Town Lake. With an uplifting team spirit and
the use of upper-body and core muscles,
dragon boating has come to play a key role
in breast cancer recovery for many.
Her mother had a breast cancer scare a
few years ago, and she’s recently watched
a friend struggling with the disease and
going through chemotherapy.
“It hits home more than ever
particularly this year,” she says “Being
so close with her, I’ve really seen breast
cancer in a whole different light; it is even
more personal now.”
World-renowned designers are among
those whose items are featured in the
show, but the real show stoppers are the
breast cancer survivors, Unfug says.
“Every single one of them is so inspiring
because it would be hard to see the silver
lining out of things like this and everyone
that I’ve talked to has done so,” she says.
Perhaps that silver lining is a vast
community of supporters and fellow
survivors, a network that’s at once global
in scope and local in focus.
“Anything that you can do locally
reminds you that while it is a national
24
issue that everyone in the United States
and even the world has to deal with,
when you bring it down to a local level,
it does create a sense of community,
like there’s things that we can do here.
The problem is so big, breast cancer, but
when you bring it down to the local level,
you see that we’re all fighting it together,”
Unfug says.
Strength in numbers
Breast cancer survivor and Ahwatukee
resident Diane Krecker certainly agrees
that teamwork is important. In fact, she’s
the captain of a team of breast cancer
survivors, and they do more than survive
– they race.
A few years ago, responding to a
request for team members, Krecker took
up dragon boat racing.
The sport has been popular in China
for thousands of years, but it’s gained
international popularity in recent years,
202 magazine / october 2013 / 202magazine.com
particularly among breast cancer survivors.
In 1996 Donald McKenzie, a British
Columbia sports medicine physician,
formed the first breast cancer dragon
boat crew to debunk the notion that
upper-body exercise caused or aggravated
lymphedema (swelling due to a build-up
of lymph fluid, a common side effect of
breast cancer treatments). Not only did
the exercise not cause lymphedema – it
improved every participant’s physical
condition and aided in lymphedema
treatment. They decided to continue
dragon boating, and other breast cancer
survivors took it up as well.
Krecker’s team, Abreast in the West,
started with a team of 16 breast cancer
survivors – and since it takes 20 to paddle
a dragon boat, they had to reach out to
other communities to “borrow” a few outof-towners. They called themselves the
Misfits, but they seemed to fit in just fine,
and placed fourth in their first race. This