Learn more about Kate, one of our runners on team Tell Every Amazing Lady® for the 2019 Los Angeles Marathon!
On Valentine’s Day 2016, my husband and I ran the L.A. Marathon. After a number of 10Ks and several half-marathons, this was our first leap to the full marathon distance. My mom, Jean Bolton, flew out from Alabama, and she and our daughters cheered us on like crazy at the 20-mile marker. Seeing them yelling, jumping, and holding signs they’d secretly made brought me to tears (well, that and the remaining 6.2 miles!). They made me determined to finish strong.
The race occurred during my mother’s glorious thirteen months in remission from ovarian cancer, but that November she was back in chemo, managing until the following summer to travel cross-country to visit us. Finally, after surgeries, second opinions, and last-line medication efforts, she entered hospice care in November 2017. She died at home on December 6, 2017.
I have decided to run the L.A. Marathon again as a member of Team T.E.A.L.®—Tell Every Amazing Lady About Ovarian Cancer. T.E.A.L.®’s mission “is to promote public awareness and education of the signs, symptoms and risk factors of ovarian cancer, while providing support to survivors and raising funds for research in order to find the cure for ovarian cancer.” Ovarian cancer has no currently effective screening tool. Most women are diagnosed when their diseases are already at an advanced stage. My mother, a doctor, saw multiple OB-Gyns for abdominal and pelvic pain before finally ordering her own CT scan. The result? Cancer, stage 4.
As a woman who is the mother of daughters, I believe urgently in the T.E.A.L.® mission—to inform and to support—and I am honored to run with them. This time I won’t pass my mom at the 20-mile marker, but I will carry her in my heart the whole way.
The first photo is of my mother and I in November 2016, at my brother’s wedding, just after she re-started chemo.
The second photo is of my mom with her best childhood friend—an ovarian cancer survivor—at a 5K to raise money and awareness for gynecological cancers. The date is September 16, 2017, less than three months before my mom died. She has a teal ribbon painted on her cheek with the words “No One Fights Alone.”
On March 24th, Kate will be running the 2019 Skecher’s Performance Los Angeles Marathon as part of team Tell Every Amazing Lady®. Support her here: https://www.crowdrise.com/o/en/campaign/tell-every-amazing-lady-about-ovarian-cancer-los-angeles-marathon1/katebonnici
