By Susan Okula
Carolyn Granger is a swimmer and a walker. For most of her life, she never even imagined she would be part of a team. But then she joined the Annapolis Dragon Boat Club.
“Here I am, 72 years old, and I’m in a team sport!” Carolyn says. “I find that astonishing!”
She signed up in 2015 at the invitation of another member. Carolyn was undergoing chemotherapy for stage 1 breast cancer at the time, and the club, founded to help breast cancer survivors, became an important part of her recovery.
“I found that I was getting in better and better shape,” Carolyn says. “The first time I ever paddled I thought I would never be able to do it. But you can take the paddle out of the water when you’re tired and start paddling again when you’re rested. I built up endurance.” She built up enough endurance that she even started signing up to race.
The camaraderie of the club helped her get through a scary time in her life. Upon first hearing her diagnosis, Carolyn remembered the harsh medical treatment that her mother had endured for breast cancer back in the 1950s — and Carolyn feared she would be facing the same regime.
Both her doctors at Anne Arundel Medical Center and ADBC team members got her through her treatment, which was more refined and less severe than what her mother had faced. Today, Carolyn is cancer free.
“I found everybody was just so great!” she says. Besides the emotional support, it was very helpful to her to exchange information about her medical odyssey with other team members who knew exactly what she was going through.
When another physical ailment temporarily stopped her from paddling, Carolyn became a drummer, sitting at the front of the dragon boat, facing her teammates, urging them on with her wide smile and infectious enthusiasm to paddle faster and stronger. Her shouts of “GO! GO! GO!” have spurred the team on in many a race and practice.
“It was magic,” Carolyn says about a race she drummed for in New Jersey. “There came a point in the boat where just everything was perfect, people were paddling together and the boat just flew!”
Editor’s note: Our beloved Carolyn passed away in September 2024 from causes unrelated to breast cancer. Her story is so uplifting that we want to continue sharing it with others, and we know she would too. Carolyn is an inspiration to us all to “keep on paddling!”
