WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — For Kristen Dugan, running is medicine for the soul. But two years ago, it became something she leaned on even more after a phone call from her doctor changed her life.
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"I love it, it's a disconnect," she said.
In January 2024, Dugan had just undergone imaging and a biopsy. The results came back that she had cancer.
"It was definite shock and almost like I couldn't work through the words," Dugan said. "You're flooded with emotions, you're flooded with how am I going to tell my children, how am I going to tell my mom."
She shared the news with her mother right away. But it wasn't until the night before the West Palm Beach More Than Pink Walk that she sat down with her daughters and told them about her diagnosis.
"They were young at the time, I think 11, 9, and 6, they were young," Dugan said. "The word cancer is scary, and I needed to show them that women are living with the disease, they're having fun, there's hope, there's joy."
Dugan said she faced treatment like a bulldog.
"I got lucky. I never got like an infection; I never got sick during treatment. So, I never had to reschedule a treatment," she said. They gave me enough shots that my blood count always were at the level it needed to be for chemo."
After five months of chemotherapy, Dugan was in remission. But beating cancer was just part of her journey. Now came the challenge of rebuilding her life, both physically and emotionally. And therapy would play an important role in that recovery.
"Anybody that's been through any type of trauma, I believe you're not the same person you were before the trauma," she said. "She doesn't exist anymore."
But just 21 months later, while returning from a trip to North Carolina and training for the New York City Marathon, Dugan began experiencing pain in one of her breasts and armpit. As fate would have it, she was already scheduled for an appointment with her oncologist the following week. What followed was a series of tests, including brain scans, MRIs, ultrasounds and biopsies.
"My tumor lit right up in my axilla, which is a fancy word for my armpit. It's in a lymph node hiding underneath a muscle, which is why we couldn't feel it," she said.
On top of dealing with immune therapy and chemotherapy, she is also training for the New York City Marathon.
"I had to interview for this race by the way, because Komen, I believe, only had 20 spots on their team and I realized quickly I wanted one," Dugan said.
Running the New York City Marathon had never been her dream until it was. She said her journey helped her find a purpose bigger than herself.
"I am doing this so that breast cancer is not the inheritance that I leave my children or other people's children," Dugan said. "I'm doing this so that their future is different than mine and hopefully, they live in a world where breast cancer is a disease of the past."
And Dugan's commitment to helping others doesn't stop at the finish line. She's also serving as this year's event chair for the 36th Susan G. Komen More Than Pink Walk in West Palm Beach on Jan. 30. It's another way she's using her own experience with breast cancer to give hope to others facing the same fight.
