- April 25, 2024
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When Flagler Beach resident Nancy Gibbs ran the Pink Army’s 5K Breast Cancer Awareness Run last year, she did it to honor survivors. When she walked it this year, she was one.
Gibbs, 47, did a self-check last October — the breast cancer awareness events helped remind her to check — and found a lump.
“It’s always at the back of a woman’s mind that you have to be checked if you’re that age,” she said. “But I think the events make you more aware and more energized to check.”
Now, having lived through cancer, chemotherapy and surgery, Gibbs participates in the events to raise awareness and spare other women that pain.
With Tom Gibbs Chevrolet, owned by Tom, the brother of her husband, Bob, she helped organize a team of 117 people to participate in the run this year. They’re employees, family members, church friends. They’ve raised more than $2,000.
The dealership participated last year with 30-40 team members. “This year, we kind of stepped it up,” Gibbs said. “I see the definite urgency of it now, because I’ve lived it. Anything that I can do to help other women not have to go through this, that is what I plan on doing.”
Gibbs was back at work Friday at the Chevy dealership, where she was a comptroller before she got sick. A pink car with a bouquet of pink balloons sat in front of the building, and inside, employees and volunteers sorted Pink Army T-shirts.
“I’m just able to get out and about,” she said. But she was determined to complete the 5K awareness run on Sunday. “I may be last, but I’m going to finish,” she said.
She did.
‘A shock’
Gibbs was healthy before she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“I had no health issues at all. It was a shock,” she said.
She found a lump in October, but didn’t get an official diagnosis until January.
The wait was agonizing.
“It’s very scary to not know what’s going on,” she said. “The waiting for the test is extremely stressful for the patient and the patient’s significant other.”
Then Gibbs had surgery and chemotherapy, but the hardest part of the year-long ordeal wasn’t physical.
“When you’re doing the chemo, you’re meeting a lot of other people with cancer, and it’s not just breast cancer,” Gibbs said. “You’re meeting a lot of wonderful people.”
And some of them don’t make it.
Helping others
Gibbs is now cancer-free and plans to spend her coming years to continue raising awareness so other women will be, too. She has already started planning a breast cancer awareness ball for next year. It’s scheduled, tentatively, for Oct. 8.
As a survivor, she has some advice for other women.
“Everyone needs to do the screenings,” she said. “Everyone needs to be on top of their own health and not put it off.”
Getting regular mammograms alone isn’t enough. Gibbs met one woman who got them yearly but didn’t self-check; by the time she was diagnosed, she had stage-three cancer.
For women who need mammograms but aren’t insured, Gibbs said, there is a lot of help out there. “You just have to find it,” she said. “The best place to start is Florida Hospital Flagler, with the Pink Army, and go from there.”
Gibbs set up her own Pink Army fundraising site on through the Florida Hospital Foundation webpage and has raised $365 so far this October.
Gibbs’ brush with the deadly illness changed her view on life.
“You never know when you’re going to be called,” she said. “People who’ve never had that awakening don’t realize that, really. They may think they’re invincible. But when you have something like this, you realize time is precious.”
And because of that, she said, people should make it count.
“Spend time with your family and do the things that you like to do and enjoy life,” she said. “That’s important. The dishes can wait. Go have fun!”
