Carol: Week 13--Walk like an Egyptian

(Article first published as Week 13--Walk like an Egyptian on Technorati. This is Week 13 chronicling my training for the 3-day for the Cure.)

Training went fairly well this past week considering I spent a few days visiting my sister in the beautiful town of Castle Rock, Colorado.

My sister, who is a nurse, was a tad bit worried about me continuing my training for the 3-day for the Cure, especially after last week's stupidity that left me and my walking buddies near heat exhaustion. But after assuring my sister that (1) it was much cooler here than in Texas (2) I would bring water and a cell phone (3) I had my emergency money and (4) I was familiar with some tips on how to avoid high altitude sickness, I marched on my merry way.

I am happy to report that so far my training here has been uneventful. I had planned to design one of my training walks into town with a little side trip to Dream Pastries until a friend pointed out that the benefits of any training walk would quickly be negated by all that sugary goodness. I swear some people are just killjoys.

One highlight of my trip was going to the King Tut exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. The exhibit was not only stunning, but I learned a few things, too, while listening to Harrison Ford's soothing voice on the $5 audio tape relaying interesting tidbits of information about the exhibit.

One such miscellaneous tidbit said how the Egyptians had a pretty good knowledge of the body and its organs--all except the brain. Yep, apparently they didn't think much of Mr. Grey Matter and tossed Mr. Brain aside instead of storing it in one of those nifty canopic coffinettes--miniature coffins that housed internal organs.

Instead, the Egyptians viewed the heart as the most important organ. It was the heart that was weighed against the Feather of Truth to determine if a person's entrance was granted into the afterlife or sent to the Devourer of the Dead.

I guess I have to agree with the Egyptians about the importance of the heart. When people ask me why I'm willing to participate in this 60-mile walk to fight breast cancer, I can spout off statistics and tell you that more than 1.3 million women are diagnosed with breast cancer globally each year, more than 465,000 die from the disease each year and that a woman dies from breast cancer every 68 seconds.

But for me, it still remains a matter of the heart.