welcome to i got to run with the well i'm caroline plank host of this segment today i have agnes to borrow now oquendo with me she is a mother a breast cancer survivor and author our runner welcome hi thank you for having me here how are you i'm good thank you so agnes tell us a little bit about yourself what is what running mean to you running it's something that i i started at a late age actually i started running at age twenty five and i just became addicted to it i couldn't run enough i've slowed down some now but running really helped me get through my diagnosis of breast cancer i tribute a lot of my recovery to it and it's been a very important part of my life yeah of course and did you start running long distance how did you get into running actually i jumped into three mile fun run like spark that they have every saturday i just wanted to get into better shape and after that it was history i just couldn't run enough like i said i started out doing three milers five ks five milers and then eventually i worked my way up to the marathon and i fell in love with the marathon that's awesome that's great you got addicted to it and you got a running bug so i said you're an author and you are your two time author but more on the way so your st book you wrote is running writing a book about everything that i went through just nineteen years later right exactly how so it's like i said it's something that i wanted to do and i finally decided i think it's time that i do it put everything on paper right yeah absolutely tell me about the book and what happens i know you you do say you talk about how you were diagnosed with breast cancer and then it was kind of your catalyst to get things going right so tell me about that so you were diagnosed with breast cancer and then i was diagnosed and i didn't believe it and i went through a lot of  emotions denial was the st one and i said no no you must read somebody else's report that can't be right i was very healthy at the time and it just couldn't have been me i always went for a check up every year so when i was diagnosed like i said i went through that period it really the denial only lasted a weekend because being a nurse i knew that i had to do something about it  so i did i decided you know i'm going to take care of it right away i didn't want to wait around a long time i wanted it out of my body absolutely absolutely and you know when they say when the going gets tough the tough get going and that seems like exactly like what you did you said you called the mayor of new york city and that councilmen what made you do that it bothered me because when i was diagnosed i what i did was i went for my mammography but when i originally i had made an appointment and i had to wait four months for an appointment and i'm the type of person when i decide i want to do something i want to do it now i don't want to do it later so it bothered me that i waited for months but i waited you know and then when i was running a person i was running with  a new location open up and i called and i went for an appointment right away so when my cancer was found it bothered me even more because i realized what what would have happened if i waited those four months so that sparked me to contact everyone i could think of the mayor the b president council members i wrote so many letters made calls and at the time councilman jim otto contacted me back that's amazing and then what did you wind up doing i went with him we went to city hall and i testified on behalf of women of staten island because my claim was that i had to wait so long and i didn't think that that's something that we should have to wait something as port and as important as our health and so i testified in city hall regarding the weight and you're a nurse so that's a very credible testimony right because four months can really make or break a diagnoses when you were testifying how did you feel for you really nervous or i was i was a little bit nervous and i wasn't exactly sure  what i was going to do or what i was going to say i didn't write anything down and i just spoke exactly what happened to me and it was it was kind of nice because there was  radiologist there who also testified and he pretty much said everything that i said because there was someone else who testified that there wasn't a long way and i was like that's not true but right what ended up happening from your testimony well after that the wait started getting shorter and shorter because a lot of places were closing as well radiologists  they have to have so many reads to be certified in breast cancer reading right the radiology reports did you say canada had a higher like had they had to read more about port yet radiologist how to read more sports and more accurate in their reading that's something that i learned in city hall and then councilman oddo and i we got together with other people and we were able to get  a new mammography machine for the hospital that i worked at wow that's really amazing you've made a lot of progress and made a huge difference for so so many women i am sure of it because yes like you said you know you put it you kind of put it off your so i put off my mammogram for a long time i you know i felt something about like oh i'll put it off and then on top of that is a wait time but yes so that's so important to get in early detection is key so your book isn't completely all about your diagnoses and testifying and working although it's a big part of it tell me about the other part of your book and who l rodriguez is lou rodriguez is a very good friend of mine and he is ultra runner and his idea was to run from new york to miami for breast cancer and so that's what we did we started out in august and echoplex park in staten island and a bunch of runners from staten island joined us the st day it was really a great experience having everybody there for a sendoff and then for the next two days there were other runners who ran with us my sister was one tina clark and mike told been and spencer alice they ran with us for the next two days and then after that it was well and i with our team my team was my daughter and my sister and they left us in when we got sue with carolina and crowing is harder than running really yeah i think because all you have to do is run you just run you don't worry about anything else your crew has to worry about the runner has to get all the supplies together crowing is a very very hard job and it was hot i was very astonished at the time of year you all decided to run and tell me about how you kept track of your days because every day you had you know you really documented pretty vividly what happened and along with documenting the events the document at that temperature and i was like oh my god yeah i kept a journal and i documented and i would email everything to my friends wow that's amazing so tell me about the most eventful day you guys had or the most memorable day you had they were all very interesting i would meet a lot of people along the way because we had a big sign on the truck right running from new york to miami and people would stop and you know ask questions or they come over to me and say oh i'm a breast cancer survivor or someone in their family i met a lot of different people along the way i think one that i always think of is the truck driver who blew their horn at us and then took off their cap it was a woman and she was completely bald so she i guess was all slow a breast cancer survivor or cancer survivor who just went through having chemo right yeah just from reading you really reach so many people on that trip and you know people really are willing to share their stories and you really can tell how many people you touched on the way so tell me what the point of going from new york to miami was what exactly did you guys do pretty much almost at every stop well every day we were on the road for like eight hours right so it was like a full time job right so we were on the road for eight hours i met people i spoke with people really the intention was education right education for  early detection how important that is how important it is to have your annual mammogram check ups just being in charge of your own your own body how important that is being aware of that i think is really important and sometimes we kind of forget about ourselves especially when you're a mother you know you're working hard you're raising your children you kind of forget to take care of yourself and it's important that you you do take care of yourself because if you're no longer there then there's no one there you know to take your place really not the way that you would so i think it's very very important for all of us to just take a few minutes while it's going to be more than a few minutes but always take care of yourself as well right so what stood out to me a lot was that young woman who said that she found a lot and she went to the doctor and the doctors kind of like brushed off and said it was just nothing right right right so what happened what exactly happened with her i really wish that i was able to stay in contact with her but i told her you know get another opinion  just listen to what he said because you don't want to wait around and see what's going to happen you should always part of being in control of your own health is getting another opinion if you're not sure you want to be comfortable with yourself so she said that she would and i hope that she did yeah and here i'm sure hearing it from a nurse and i started by her she probably really took that to heart and took it seriously so hopefully she's dead yeah well she did take the time to stop and  god what happened with that we were pulled over on the side of the road to wait for lou to come up the hill and a car pulled up in front of us a few feet away and two guys exit at the car and they started urinating and i'm looking at the whole they're not so i think that my daughter she yells out mom let's go see a hoax so i left and then they ran into that car and they started following us it was it was kind of a scary little scary but then you guys lost them and again happened and then i read that luke got chased by a dog yes he did come running up to the car you know saying oh i'm being chased  and then the dog eventually he did he left gave up you know like this guy isn't stopping but he maybe just wanted to play and not let him that is so funny so in total how many days did it take for you guys to get from  york and i to miami and then how many miles on average per day it took us thirty eight days and like i said we were out there about eight hours of course it's not eight hours of continuous running you stop and you eat and it was a long usually the day consisted of about twenty miles twenty five miles a day  hot so you guys made some pit stops along the way you stopped in washington d c right yes so what happened in washington d c we had a proclamation to deliver to the president of the united states pouring as soon as we got there it started pouring rain so we were supposed to i thought we were supposed to be met by someone but i think there was some miscommunication so we didn't meet anybody but my daughter and i we reporters and different people because people would call them all this somebody you know running on the road so this young lady she contacted me and she came to meet us and towns right so we really stayed on the back road so yeah same as like you guys had a lot of t v shows that were interested in and your story and what happened and what you were doing and what your mission was was a physical therapist and so that was exciting and yes we met his son gary and what was funny i had we had just arrived in jacksonville and i parked the car and who so how did you guys feel as you were approaching the end of the journey it was exciting we were happy that we were we were coming close to miami but it was also kind of sad that it was going to be over it's kind of hard to explain why the two different feelings i don't know why but as the closer that we got so miami i was feeling sad that is over because we did meet so many great people along the way it was really exciting right yeah that is exciting it's amazing that you guys took all this time and how much time did you take off of work for it you took a pretty good amount of time off right yeah i took off about two months from work and i  most most of it anyway towards education and for early detection so they were also a big part that helped us along the way that's amazing so you guys get to miami and how is lou doing our ear doing how much did you sleep that day was over the night it was over so we got some miami and you know we were really happy and everything but like i said sad at the same time and the next day every day we were just clean out the truck because you know that was our vehicle and i was watching the news and i saw a plane crash into one of the towers and i thought it was a movie and i was like i seen that movie before i don't and then i looked at it again and i was like is this real i couldn't believe that that actually happened it was the news right now and it on nine dollars yes yes wow that is a pretty extraordinary ending so how did you get from back up from miami to new york because i don't think you could take a plane you have to get the car back up brain yes yes so we drove back  along the way i tried to call everybody that i know and nobody you know i couldn't contact anybody so it was kind of scary so we drove back we had new york plates and everybody would blow their horn and you know it was it was it was a very solemn feeling you know coming back at that time and i was worried about everybody yeah of course and you guys had a sign on the car that said running against cancer right right and then your a place to that sign would watch with the american flag yeah where did you guys find that flag actually we found it on the ground on one of the runs so coincidental yes came in handy while that's really an amazing journey and what are you doing now are you still running today i run but not as much as i used to florida is very hot so yeah so i find reading more on the treadmill a little easier when i lived in fort lauderdale i did run on the beach every day which was nice but the beach is not close to me any more i guess you guys ought to move back i would love to have along the beach again are you doing health wise how do you keep up with your how and all that well i still go for my annual check ups because i think it's really a poor and i encourage everyone i know to do the and tell me about my shorts and why you created it well i want to continue writing because i love reading and writing and my shorts is a novel it's a novel about a family coming from europe so the united states and trials and tribulations that they go through war went through at that time it's a novel so it's i say it's not true but it is inspired by people very close to me and so this book is very dear to my heart and we don't realize all the things that happens to people through their life we never know what's going on with anybody so the story is about four generations so if i think it's a really good book i everyone who has read it so for has told me how much they enjoyed that book i really do enjoy it i'm still in the middle of reading it but it is a page turner so these are different points of view that's how you broke up the book right you broke it up  to the family as points of views that different family member points of view yes so what was your reasoning for doing that is there why why that style or when i write i just write i don't make any plans of how i write it kind of just comes to me and that's how i put it down and in my shorts like you said it's basically about each person that chapter is about that person and what they go through and what they feel their emotions and eventually they will wind up together so i just it just flowed that way for me right so are you writing any other book yes i'm writing a sequel to my shorts ok and it's i'm really very excited about that one that one is truly a novel so it's fiction not connected to your family in any way no and are you still a nurse yes i'm still a nurse actually i'm not really working at the moment so it gives me a little bit more time to write whereas running against cancer took me a year to write and my shorts also took me a year to wri but i'm almost done with this rd book and some it only took me a few months and i'm working on two other books at the same time as well wow that's pretty amazing is there anything you wish i asked you that i didn't ask brooklyn thursday a mad two on veterans in staten island and then friday i am also in bay ridge at the bookmark shop so i'm really excited about all those books signed ok so we're going to have to catch you there well thank you so much for being here it's been such a pleasure to meet you and talk to you and arrange your books a big thank you to the manhattan neighborhood and at work and will stand a chance for having us today it was so great talking to agnes today and her journey through cancer and running and to get to know her and all about her books for me you can find my blog battle lemons blog dot com and my documentary there on how i want from a mastectomy to my st marathon in less than a year i am also running for the susan g komen fund september