Dressed in pink, a crowd of cancer survivors, those with cancer, and family and friends came out for the 21st annual West End Pink Light Walk for Breast Cancer Awareness on Tuesday night.

The walk was supposed to step off from American Legion Post 927 in Gilbert and head down Route 209 to Fairgrounds Road, but emergency crews were called to a crash on Route 209 heading east a little past Weir Lake Road, and were not available to close the highway for the Pink Light Walk.

The organizers improvised, though, and the group walked through the empty lot behind the American Legion and then back to the post to hear from speakers.

One of the organizers, Carmela Heard, who warmed up the crowd with exercises before the walk, is a breast cancer survivor for 36 years. She said that 50 flags are put out every year to represent 50 breast cancer survivors and people currently battling the disease. They walk to those flags, stop and recognize those who have survived and those still fighting the disease.

“We want them to realize there is a lot of hope,” she said.

Heard said she was 37 years old when she found out she had breast cancer. Even though people told her she was too young for a mammogram and didn’t qualify for one, she pushed to get one done.

“I didn’t listen, and the reason I didn’t listen was because I lost my cousin, Theresa, at 39 years old to breast cancer,” she said.

Heard said her cousin’s mother also died from breast cancer, but no one in the family talked about it. It wasn’t until her cousin got it and died that she found out the whole story.

“None of us knew, and of course, it was the loss of Theresa that saved my life. I look at it that way,” Heard said. “I’m grateful that I had a mammogram done. If you feel anything different in your breasts, just go get it checked out.”

In addition to Heard, there are about five other women who help to organize the Pink Light Walk.

Kathie Maltez, who currently leads the organizers, said the walk was started by Mariann Ferro.

“I believe it is a great thing to get community awareness out about breast cancer,” she said.

Maltez has been involved in the planning of the event since the beginning.

After the walk, Dr. Luke Rodriguez, a surgical oncologist with the Lehigh Valley Heath Network who has an office in Lehighton, told the group that he applauds “everyone going through that battle, everyone that has been through that battle, and the people that were lost in the battle.”

Rodriguez said it’s difficult getting that call for secondary evaluation after a mammogram. It can leave a person with a feeling of a sense of doom.

“One of the things that I think is most important when we get in situations like this is realizing there are people out there,” he said. “There are supports we have, support groups like the breast cancer coalition.”

The Pennsylvania Coalition for Breast Cancer Awareness is an advocate group for patients, and has been working to make sure people can get the additional diagnostic tests they need and that they are covered by insurance. Rodriguez said these tests are needed, because they help oncologists determine the course of action for treatment.

Chemotherapy used to be the standard treatment for all breast cancer patients, but doctors have found that not all cancers respond to chemotherapy, Rodriguez said.

“Nowadays, we do everything possible to find which of the patients would benefit from chemotherapy,” he said. “Certain subtypes, we find, don’t have a great benefit from getting chemotherapy in changing their overall survival and in fact have the same exact survival without the need of chemotherapy. So now with the advances we have today, we can find the patients that would benefit from chemotherapy versus the ones that wouldn’t benefit from it.”

In addition to Rodriguez, Dr. Ali Butash, a surgical oncologist with St. Luke’s University Health Network, was also on hand to lend her support in increasing breast cancer awareness.

Although she didn’t address the group, Rodriguez pointed her out to the crowd and said that both LVHN and St. Luke’s “try to do everything we can to not just provide care to the patient, but also to understand what’s going on in life and provide support through nurse navigation support groups that can be recommended through our institutions, so you’re getting an overall experience of some type of support while you’re going through this battle.”

“I tell everyone that breast cancer, for me, my goal is to make this just a little bump in the road,” he said.

“Overall, we can continue the journey and finish, get to the destination, and look back and realize that was nothing.”