NORWAY — Dressed in a pink shirt and headband, Sarah Cummings climbed carefully out of the 40-foot boat that features the colorful head of a dragon at its bow and, at its stern, a golden tail.
Shedding her paddle and life jacket, Cummings was soon overcome by emotion as she explained how meaningful the boat ride was for her.
“I went through breast cancer treatment two years ago,” Cummings, a local resident, said on a sunny but breezy Saturday afternoon on the shores of Lake Pennesseewassee.
The Lakeside Norway boat dock at 61 Lake Road is where the vessel of the Maine Dragon Boat Club calls home.
The club held its final paddle of the season while teaming up with Cancer Resource Center of Western Maine to promote breast cancer awareness.
Roughly a dozen women donning pink scarves, boas, leis, fleeces and other flourishes signaling breast cancer awareness attended the event.
Some cancer survivors, like Cummings, got their first taste of dragon boat paddling Saturday.
“I loved it!” she said. “It was great!”
For her rehabilitation from cancer surgery and treatment, Cummings has spent most of her time in the water rather than on it, she said.
Swimming has been therapeutic, she said, but added that she’s also a fan of paddling now.
“I can see how this would be good too,” she said.
She said she learned about dragon boating at the resource center, where she received moral and financial support before, during and after her treatment.
The center offered gas cards to help with daily trips to radiation treatment 45 minutes from home. They also held yoga classes that helped Cummings on a different road, one to recovery, so she could “start to get back to normal,” she said.
Sherri Otterson, who once worked at the center and later founded and now heads the boat club, is also Cummings’ neighbor.
Also paddling in a dragon boat for the first time on Saturday was Wendy Ruby, of Harrison, who works at the resource center.
Ruby, who underwent a double mastectomy, had hoped to climb aboard a dragon boat one day, but that plan had always been thwarted by her work schedule.
On this Saturday, her hope was realized.
Dragon boats and cancer rehabilitation “kind of go hand-in-hand,” she said, because the paddling motion is good for improving range of motion and upper body muscle strength and improves the flow of lymphatic fluids.
“So, this helps,” she said. “Obviously, that motion that you use for paddling is good for stretching out those scar tissues.”
Without that movement, a cancer survivor may develop a painful condition called lymphedema, she said, in which the fluid can settle in a limb.
After the event, Otterson gathered the paddlers into a circle, praised their paddling ability and teamwork.
For more information about the Maine Dragon Boat Club, go to the group’s Facebook page or email mainedragonboatclub@gmail.com. For more information about the Cancer Resource Center of Western Maine, email info@crcofwm.org.
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