While waiting in the chiropractor’s office to have him work his magic on my aching back, I thumbed through a health magazine. On the last page was a reader-written essay about the first time something new was attempted for better health. At the end was an invitation for other readers to send in their 400-word “first time” pieces. So I sent in this:

Kiai!: How Donning a Karate Gi Rejuvenated Me
by Felicia Hodges

I’ve always been very physically active. In grade school it was kickball, tag and later, the middle school’s softball team (I played first base). As a freshman in high school, a few moths after watching my uncle in the NYC marathon, I decided to give the track team a try. I ran and jumped my way right into an athletic scholarship, seeing the US and earning a B.A. without any school loans hanging over my head after graduation.

Through career shifts, marriage, pregnancy and divorce, I kept competing. In July 2004, I retired from the sport so I could work on my master’s and still keep up with my then 11-yr-old son. A few days after I started graduate school in August, I found a pea-sized lump in my right breast.

Thanksgiving break was spent recovering from a bilateral mastectomy. In February, after watching my son do kata from the balcony of the dojo while trying to read my school assignments, I decided to take the sensei up on the offer to join the class. Since track had ended, I hadn’t even run to the refrigerator. I missed being active. I missed sweating.

And sweat, we did – thanks to the generous helpings of pushups, jumping jacks and ab work sensei dished out. At least that was familiar – unlike the stances, katas and punching/kicking drills. I felt like the world’s least coordinated person for quite a while (which sensei assured me was totally normal), but it felt really good to hit something. Plus we were encouraged to scream loudly while punching and kicking. Physically yelling while hitting a heavy bag proved to be pretty darn therapeutic – and a whole lot cheaper than psychotherapy.

Three weeks before my last radiation treatment, I entered my first competition, (I wore a hard foam protector to keep the radiated chest from getting hit). That did it: my passion for a new physical activity was ignited.

Next May, I will test for my black belt and close in on my five year “cancerversary”. Through all the physical changes breast cancer brought, karate was the one constant, proving that I may have had cancer, but cancer didn’t really have me because I could do things – very physical things – that I’d never even tried before my diagnosis. I’m so glad I donned a gi and decided to line up in the back of that class. Sweating is good for the soul.  

So tell me about your  first time!

Although gas prices are starting to come down, $3.40 is only CHEAPER – not CHEAP. To save a little more of my hard-earned bucks, I’ve decided to buy a motorcycle. Having done my research on engine size and the like, I headed out to see a man about a bike.

I popped into the Kawasaki dealer on Rte. 32 in New Windsor (NY) one afternoon. I saw rows of beautiful, big bikes, but although I heard people milling about SOMEWHERE in the store, I saw no one. Suddenly, a head popped up from behind a desk on an upstairs platform. I got a gruff “Can I help you?” from a guy who acted like he didn’t even want to be bothered with coming down the five stairs to personally greet me. I yelled up to him that I was interested in buying a bike and was looking for a model called the Eliminator. “Even if I could get one I wouldn’t carry it HERE,” he said. I guess he meant only manly man 750cc and above bikes dwelled within those four walls, not the dainty little 250cc ride I was searching for.

“Well, do you have any smaller engines at all?” I asked, my neck getting tired from talking to this man from so far away.

“Over there,” he pointed. “I’ll be down in a few – I’m putting the paper in the printer,” he added.

I waited for 10 whole minutes for this fella to finish fooling with his printer. Must have had to mill the paper first, I guess. I’m not an impatient person by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m not into being ignored either. So I did what any woman in her right mind would do – I decided to search elsewhere for the bike of my dreams and left.

Is customer service really THAT jacked up that the owner (or salesman or whatever he was) couldn’t come down to the sales floor to look me in the eye? Was the assumption that a woman in business attire sans motorhead fella at her side not really be interested in buying a motorcycle? Should I wear leather riding chaps and a skull cap to the next bike shop I visit?

Do guys have to think about crap like this?

Just in time for my annual spring-cleaning ritual, I saw an ad for a pink vacuum cleaner this morning. I literally tossed the magazine I saw it in across the room.

I suppose pink cleaning products are designed to promote consciousness about the breast cancer, but unfortunately, not everyone is truly aware of the wide swath of devastation this disease can leave in its wake.

This past March, four women I’d come to know through a breast cancer survivor message board I frequent lost their battles with this beast. They left children, partners, friends and neighbors behind who now must find a way to get through their daily routines without them. Not one of them was over 50 years old, either. Tragic, for sure, but unfortunately these courageous women are not alone.

Each year, almost 41,000 women die from breast cancer. While great strides have been made in early detection techniques and treatments in the past 10 years, 182,460 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in the US this year. Treatments are wonderful – as is helping women find out they have breast cancer while it is still in its earliest, most treatable stages – but where is the cure?

Think about it: if all the pink products that slap an awareness ribbon on their label actually donated a portion of their total proceeds to breast cancer research and development, this disease would have gone the way of the dinosaur by now. But so many of them cap their contributions or give to organizations that have such high administrative overhead that only a tiny amount actually gets funneled to research and development for finding an actual cure, not just more treatment for those of us already stricken.  

Please, before you buy a pink feather duster or toss another container of yogurt or soup with a pink ribbon on it into your shopping cart, read the label to see how much of their donation – if any – will actually benefit women who are battling breast cancer or help ensure that a cure will be found someday soon. It has come too late for Ferne, Joanne, Erin and Kathy, as well as for my mom, Maxine, who died in 1992, but hopefully, someday, a cure for this stinking disease will be found.