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By SHANNA McCORD
Sentinel staff writer
Santa Cruz Sentinel July 6, 2004
SANTA CRUZ — Michelle Sioson says she has prepared for all the hazards she
expects to encounter during her climb up Mount Shasta, elevation 14,162 feet, on
Thursday.
It’s pretty risky stuff, including making a "self arrest" if the ice becomes too
slick and her crampons slip.
"That’s when you throw the ice ax in the side of the mountain, and it stops you
from sliding down," Sioson, 29, said.
Not to mention the inevitable nausea, pounding headaches and pure exhaustion
that comes with that level of exertion at such an elevation.
But nothing Sioson faces on the mountain, she says, could be more daunting than
the battle against breast cancer her mother, Maray Sioson of Cleveland, fought
this year.
Maray Sioson, 64, is in remission after radiation and a lumpectomy, Sioson said.
To show support for her mother and the 215,000 women expected to be diagnosed
with breast cancer in the United States this year, Sioson, a county employee
with First 5 Santa Cruz County, is joining the Climb Against All Odds.
Twenty-five San Francisco Bay Area mountain climbers will ascend Mount Shasta in
the name of breast-cancer prevention.
Each year in California, about 21,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer and
about 4,000 die of the disease.
The incidence of breast cancer in the United States has nearly tripled in the
past 50 years. In the 1940s, lifetime risk was one in 22. Today women face odds
of 1 in 7.
"With my love of climbing and my mom’s diagnosis, it’s a great way to do two
things at once," said Sioson, a Los Gatos resident.
Sioson stumbled upon the Mount Shasta expedition in March while surfing the Web
for an athletic event that supports breast cancer patients, something like the
Avon Breast Cancer Walk.
Sioson, who has extensive climbing experience at the Grand Tetons in Wyoming,
Yosemite and Lake Tahoe, immediately added her name to the Mount Shasta crew and
went to work raising the $8,000 required to participate in the fifth annual
climb organized by the Breast Cancer Fund, a national organization based in San
Francisco that seeks to identify and prevent the causes of breast cancer.
Most of her donations have come from family, friends and co-workers. She’s also
received $428 from the Watsonville Rotary Club, $100 from Watsonville Community
Hospital and $200 from Sun Microsystems in Santa Clara.
The group’s overall fund-raising goal is $500,000.
Getting ready for the 18-hour climb scheduled for July 8 has kept Sioson lifting
weights, running and hiking with water bottles weighing up to 30 pounds inside
her backpack.
She says she’s ready and just a bit nervous.
"I am a little," she said. "But I’m probably more excited than nervous."
Inside Sioson’s backpack during the climb will be small prayer flags with the
names of breast cancer patients provided by donors who gave $100 or more.
So when her legs feel like lead, the freezing air is nipping at her face and her
lungs are gasping for sips of oxygen, Sioson will pull out the flag with her
mom’s name on it to give her an extra push.
"She’s proud," Sioson said about what her mother thinks of the climb. "She
doesn’t want to see a picture of me really high, but she’s proud."
Source :
http://www.breastcancerfund.org/site/apps/nl/content.asp?c=kwKXLdPaE&b=86071&ct=160112