About Mary
Mary Wilson Gooze was diagnosed with breast cancer in January of 2012. It was an early detection due to a yearly mammogram screening, and the treatments were surgery, chemotherapy and radiation that consumed nine months of her life. During that time, swimming was Mary’s refuge. With her bald head, Mary would venture down to the pool and swim as a temporary reprieve from thinking about cancer.
Twenty months after her last radiation treatment, Mary received the call that the pain in her hip was cancer. The breast cancer had metastasized to her bones. The real fight had now begun as Mary’s diagnosis was incurable metastatic breast cancer (stage IV).
Because a terminal diagnosis is physically as well as emotionally daunting, Mary has decided to focus her days doing something that she loves — swimming across as many lakes as possible bringing awareness and funding to Metastatic Breast Cancer, a poorly funded disease.
As fellow swimmers of Mary, we have decided to join her fight by swimming to raise awareness and research funds specifically for fighting metastatic breast cancer. We hope you will join us to Swim for Stage IV!
All money raised will go to METAvivor (www.metavivor.org), a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to increasing awareness of advanced breast cancer and equity in research and patient support.
Did You Know?
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155,000 women and men in the U.S. have metastatic breast cancer
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More than 40,000 Americans die from metastatic breast cancer each year
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30% of patients diagnosed with earlier stage breast cancer will eventually develop metastatic (stage IV) breast cancer
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Median survival after a metastatic breast cancer diagnosis is three years
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100% of breast cancer deaths occur because of metastasis
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Only 2% of breast cancer research dollars fund metastatic breast cancer
