Norine Rathbone

I have a very unique story that inspires cancer patients to never give up their dreams.

My primary career for 13 years has been as director of accounting at a company in Las Vegas, but my intensive volunteer commitment started in 2008.

It was then that St. Rose Dominican Hospitals launched the first ever Dragon Boat Regatta at Lake Las Vegas, Nevada to raise money for breast cancer patients who do not have medical insurance.

As a breast cancer survivor (and a person who is high on the autistic spectrum), I joined the Las Vegas Pink Paddlers team as steersman (woman). Dragon boats are of traditional Chinese design, decorated to resemble a dragon, propelled with paddles by a large crew and used for racing.

I came by my athletic skills from being a baseball player in the Men’s Senior Baseball League, which is a national organization of some 46,000 men (and fewer than 5 women including me) playing hardball. I also had a two-year professional career in women’s full-tackle football.

I was a rookie baseball player when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000 at the end of my first year in the sport. I never let the cancer stop me from crossing the gender line in a sport that I had come to love through my father’s passion for it. It’s been 17 years since my double mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation, but having an athletic body taught me that you can live life to your fullest even if your body is not healthy.

I would like to make a national difference with Major League Baseball. Wouldn’t it be great if the league allowed a real live breast cancer survivor (like me) to swing their wood-painted bat at the plate every Mother’s Day? The impact that this gesture would make to women everywhere dealing with breast cancer would be tremendous. But how do you convince the men that is the right thing to do?

As a cancer-fighting champion older athlete, my life is a beacon to all ages of people who find themselves dealing with cancer in their bodies to keep going. Yes, it is hard to battle cancer, but having others who have gone on to become older survivors teaches us that we can have a life, even with cancer in it.