Several years after Annie Applegarth battled sarcoma, she joined the Mermaids, a group that participates in Swim Across America, an event that raises money for cancer research. Before her diagnosis she had never spent much time in the water. Now her friends and family cheer as she finishes up a mile.

Listen

Transcript

My name is Anne Noelle Applegarth. Most people call me Annie. I had soft tissue sarcoma. They were diagnosed in 2002. Um, but I haven’t had one since 2004. The mermaids, actually, it’s Millie’s mermaids. Millie is a cancer surviving dog. And Millie’s mermaids are a team of swimmers. We swim to raise money for Swim Across America.

I run a historic home for the city of Baltimore. And next door to us is Betsy and Drew Geronik, and the Geroniks own a lovely, beautiful, blonde Labrador retriever named Millie. Betsy Geronik was the co chairman of Bringing Swim Across America to Baltimore. It’s a national campaign, and the inaugural swim was here, and so they had asked me, because I have event experience and extensive experience in the music and entertainment industry, if I would help.

And then they said, after a few meetings. Oh, you should swim. And I thought, Oh, here, you’re out of your mind. I don’t swim. I’m over 50. I’m a fatty, fatty two by four. I don’t swim. And it turned out that there was a coach, Annie Lawler, with the Michael Phelps Swim School and the North Baltimore Aquatic Center, who actually was undergoing treatment for cancer herself.

So they arranged for her to coach a team of swimmers. Our little team raised 17, 000 dollars on 10 and 20 dollar donations for Swim America Baltimore, and the money comes to Hopkins. The Kimmel Cancer Center has a Swim Across America lab, and It was amazing for me because I think anybody who’s had cancer realizes at a certain point that this has changed your life.

I came around the bend to the end of the race and my brother was on the dock, screaming, everybody was screaming, the dog is getting in the water, Millie’s getting in the water with us. And for the first time, I felt like I have thrived. I am thriving and I have really survived. And not only is my life different, but it’s so enormously better from the challenge that, that not only cancer presented to me, but that this swim, And this organization had brought to me.

It’s an amazing, amazing event. It’s an amazing group to be a part of. This year there were 600 swimmers, and we raised 550 thousand dollars so a little more than we raised last year. I’m not one soldier. In this fight for cancer, I’m now a member of an army. Suddenly, one thing changes your life, and then something entirely different that you never thought you would do in your life, changes your life in a whole positive way.