On Saturday, Oct. 2, 20 young female breast cancer survivors will fire up their Harleys and take off on a motorcycle ride up the coast of California to raise awareness and needed funds for breast cancer research and support programs. “Changing Gears”, the first breast ride in the nation comprised solely of breast cancer survivors, seeks to challenge media stereotypes of breast cancer survivors and highlight the reality that there is life after cancer.

“A lot of times what you see of young women [who have survived breast cancer] in the media is women dying tragically and leaving their grieving family behind or women who are going out and doing such extraordinary things, like climbing Mt. Everest, that more average, normal [women], everybody else, feels inadequate, especially during those times when you just can’t even get out of bed from chemo,” said one of the ride’s co-founders, Megan Dwyer.

The metaphorical allusion in Changing Gears – changing common perceptions of who gets breast cancer – is deliberate on the part of the organizers, Dwyer and friend Meredith Campbell, who met while competing in a sailing regatta in Australia. Campbell, of Brisbane, Australia, is also a breast cancer survivor.

“For young women, [getting breast cancer is] really an isolating experience because it fundamentally changes the way you look at things in life and it tends to isolate you from your other friends and family who have no understanding of what you actually went through,” Campbell said. “It wasn’t until I met Megan down in Sydney at the Gay Games that I’d actually met another young woman who’d not only had breast cancer, but that I had something in common with… We were really keen to give that experience of meeting other young women [with breast cancer] to as many other young women as possible, because it had been so beneficial for us.”

“Cancer is often a wake-up call,” Dwyer said, explaining why they chose to name the event Changing Gears. “So you change gears and reevaluate your life in a lot of different ways, and live in the moment; like, ‘I’m going to shift gears and take on what’s right in front of me right now.’”

Dwyer was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 35 and Campbell at 33. During their process through cancer, chemotherapy and healing, both noticed that resources explicitly catering to young women’s issues were scarce.

“What the research has shown is that there is a much higher sense of distress for young women,” Dwyer said. “There’s more social isolation, you’re cut off more from your peer group. Older women tend to have more health problems and there are more people who have been through other forms of cancer that they can connect with and share with. With younger women, that doesn’t happen. So they find that their peer groups actually shrink over time, when they actually need more of a support network. And it’s very difficult to talk to people that haven’t been through it – it’s just a different conversation.”

Other issues facing young females with breast cancer include mothers’ fear of leaving young children behind if they don’t make it; women who are pregnant at the time they are diagnosed; issues of fertility for women who want to be pregnant, since chemotherapy can affect fertility; early menopause; and oftentimes greater financial distress and not having the ability or the savings to take time off for chemotherapy.

Dwyer and Campbell wrote a book called Amazon Heart – Coping with Breast Cancer Warrior Princess Style detailing their experiences with breast cancer at a young age and their resulting friendship. Then they took their ideas a step further and co-founded a peer support, information and advocacy organization called Amazon Heart that caters to young women with breast cancer by creating events like Changing Gears and an online peer support program is scheduled to launch mid-2005.

“We wanted to create more social networking experiences, which is something that a lot of research has said – that young women actually appreciate [support groups] more when you can just hang out, and conversations about our issues happen when they happen,” Campbell said. “It’s that opportunity to be around other women that have this common frame of reference.”

Twenty years ago, statistics said that one in 11 women would be diagnosed with breast cancer in the U.S. That number has climbed to one in seven today.

Preliminary research conducted at the University of California San Francisco shows that lesbians are at slightly higher risk of developing breast cancer than other women, though the factors involved have not yet been defined. As a lesbian with a partner, Dwyer noticed that support resources frequently left out any reference to same-sex couples.

“My experience going through breast cancer was that [lesbians] were left just completely out of the conversation,” she said, adding that it was difficult for her and her partner to find lesbian-specific support groups for women with breast cancer and their partners.

Changing Gears is based on a similar event held in Australia in 1996 called “Follow the Fenceline” where a group of breast cancer survivors rode 10,500 miles around Australia over the course of three months.

All 20 riders in Saturday’s event, 15 from the United States and 5 Australia, have faced breast cancer; four of the riders are lesbians and two of the riders live in San Diego. None of Changing Gears’ Australian riders participated in the Follow the Fenceline ride. Applications for the ride were recruited through the databases of Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization and the Young Survival Coalition, as well as from women’s motorcycling groups in the U.S. and Australia. All funds raised through the ride will go to Y-ME and the Young Survival Coalition.

Harley Davidson loaned the Changing Gears group 20 motorcycles, supplied them with riding jackets and helmets and provided rider training for beginners prior to the event.

“Five women learned to ride just for this event,” Dwyer said. “It’s a pretty big undertaking, and it’s not necessarily the easiest ride in the world, going up the coast of California, so they had to take on a pretty big challenge to go out and do that.”

The ride may become an annual event depending on its success, Dwyer said. Groups in the United Kingdom and Australia are interested in starting up similar rides, so it may also become global.

Documentary filmmaker Melissa Regan will record the ride on film and photojournalist Jill Karnicki will capture the ride in still photography.

“To me, riding motorbikes was always something I’d planned to do when I had my mid-life crisis in my 40s, and being diagnosed at the age of 33, it was like, ‘What the hell are you waiting for?’” Campbell said.

At least 10 local motorcycle groups have helped spread the word about the ride, including San Diego Motorcycle Riders, the Motorcycle Singles Club, and Moto Angelz.

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