Anyone who knows me, knows that I am no sports fan.  As for participating in sports, I’ve tried, but I stink.  My hand/eye coordination is lacking, I over analyze when trying to participate, and most sports don’t appeal to me.  As a young teenager, I started taking dance classes, which I paid for.  I loved tap, jazz, and ballet. Tap was and still is my favorite.  I wasn’t very good at acrobatics but I took the class anyway.  I also loved, and still love, to read and to sing.  I started taking Tae Kwon Do (TKD– a Korean form of marital arts) about 9 years ago with my children, Xavier, Christian, and Gillian.  You may say, “But that is a sport”.  True, but my favorite part of TKD is the poomse (forms).  I like the dance-like moves.  As for full contact sparring (fighting), I can do without it.  I don’t like getting hurt and I really hate the bruises that resulted from getting hit.  (I haven’t been able to spar in quite a while though).  Gillian, on the other hand, loves to spar.

There were a few reasons why I wasn’t good at sports.  I was the only left handed person in my family.  My parents didn’t have much money as my dad was ill and my parents had eight children to support.  When I first started learning to play “catch”, I had to use a “righty” glove.  When I tried out for Little League, as my older sisters had, I had finally just gotten a “lefty” glove, and I was ass backwards when it came to fielding and throwing a softball.  I didn’t make the team that everyone who tried out for was supposed to make. That was the end of my Little League career.  I also wasn’t really into sports.  I didn’t enjoy playing softball, basketball, volleyball, etc.  I was a bit of a “girly-girl”.  I liked dance.  I was thrilled when in the second half of my freshman year in high school, I was allowed to join the “Modern Dance” class.  Modern Dance became my gym class for the remainder of my high school years.  Hurray! No more changing for gym class and no more embarrassing myself trying to play games that I had no coordination for and no interest in playing.

So why “Breast Cancer‘s Triple Play”?  Charles.  My husband Charles is a huge sports fan, as are my sons Xavier and Christian.  When I met Charles 24 years ago, he played full court basketball everyday.  He also played softball and baseball regularly in Central Park.  He played football and racquetball.  He was good at any sport he tried, so unlike me. He and Gillian watch Mixed Martial Arts matches together.   He is a fan of the Yankees, the Giants, and the Knicks.  Charles came up with the name.  It certainly fits as I’ve had three breast cancer diagnoses & my cancer is Triple Negative.   We all hope that this round of treatment will be “the triple play” and any remaining cancer cells will be “called out” in my body and this extra inning and this game will end with me and my team as the victors and those pesky cancer cells as the big loser.