Stand Up To Cancer

Budge and Arlene Brown

After losing his wife Arlene to breast cancer in 2005, Budge Brown, a Napa Valley winemaker, found a unique away to raise awareness of the disease - his Cleavage Creek wines, which feature the faces of breast cancer survivors on their bottles and benefit breast cancer research. The Cleavage Creek wines include a cabernet sauvignon, petit sirah and cabernet-syrah, all award-winners. The stories of the women featured on this year's Cleavage Creek wines are available on his vineyard's website. "Wasn't any grand plan," Brown says of the project. "It all just came together. A lot of wines have forgettable names, but people remember 'Cleavage.'"
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,560440,00.html

Tess Gallagher

Gallagher, a noted poet and the widow of famed short story writer Raymond Carver, shares how her battle with cancer "quickened her clock," giving her the courage to take care of her terminally ill mother, buy the cottage in Ireland she'd always dreamed of and go toe-to-toe with a publishing giant to preserve Carver's legacy. "Having cancer made me realize, 'you better get your dream accomplished.' Right now is the moment," she says. "I think I take a lot more chances," she said. "Cancer gave me all kinds of courage and quickened my clock."
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_wa_tess_gallagher.html

Dominic Osorio

Dominic is a 7-year-old boy from Maryland fighting brain cancer - but thanks to some creative storytelling on the part of his mom, Nicole, he's come to think he's a superhero fighting evil with every difficult procedure or treatment. Inspired by his story, a friend raised funds to create a comic book about the superhero "Dominator," who wears a red body suit with a big blue D on the chest. Though Dominic continues to fight against the tumor - and the forces of evil - his grandmother reports that he isn't giving up. "He has been fighting for two years, and he is still fighting," she said. "He always told us to believe. We are still hoping there is one more treatment to try."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,562240,00.html

Gloria Mallory and Becky

In this moving piece out of South Dakota, writer Brady Mallory describes his mother Gloria's heroism in facing breast cancer as well as the same heroism he recently saw in a woman named Becky. "She had just had chemotherapy the day before . . . not once did she say her condition was an injustice," he writes. "Instead, and gracefully so, she said, 'You can choose to stay in bed every day, or you can choose to get out of bed and fight. I choose to fight.'" He adds, "As a 22-year-old man, my hero is still very much my mother."
http://media.www.sdsucollegian.com/media/storage/paper484/news/2009/10/07/OpinionEditorial/Mother.Displays.Heroism.In.Her.Breast.Cancer.Battle-3795834.shtml

As always, we invite you to share your stories with us in the comments below.