Rick Budai, a man with a personal mission to raise awareness about the importance of early detection of breast cancer, passed through Grahamstown last weekend while on a mammoth 3500km cycle from Nelspruit to Cape Town.
Rick Budai, a man with a personal mission to raise awareness about the importance of early detection of breast cancer, passed through Grahamstown last weekend while on a mammoth 3500km cycle from Nelspruit to Cape Town.
Interrupting his marathon cycle to speak to Grocott's Mail, Budai (50), of Hazyview, revealed his own anxiety when his wife, Carolyn (42), was diagnosed.
"I’m not really one for remembering dates – not even my own birthday," he said. "However, September 19, 2014 – it was a Friday – was one of the worst days of my life."
Budai, owner of Perry’s Bridge Reptile Park, said was only detected by chance during a health test when the couple applied for a hospital plan.
His epic cycle is raising funds for PinkDrive, a breast cancer public benefit organisation which runs two mobile breast check units, as well as three educational vehicles. Budai said both units travel to semi-urban and urban areas around South Africa with the aim of enabling disadvantaged communities access to education, physical examinations and how to do a breast self-examination.
He said the mobile screening unit was launched in the Western Cape in 2011 and operated through local clinics, community health centres and hospitals. He left Nelspruit on 1 September and will arrive in Cape Town on 14 October and during his Grahamstown stop said his journey was good although the bad weather he had cycled through was a worry.
But motorists on the road were very nice to him. "It's important that people get checked for cancer," he told Grocott's. "The dangerous thing is to live with cancer and not get treated in the early stages.
Knowing that you have got cancer is not a life sentence – most people, when they find out that they have cancer, the only thing that comes to their minds is that they going to die. "At PinkDrive the test is done for free and that has been going on for the past six years," said Budai.
Budai's friend Dave Lasarow, who is driving the backup vehicle throughout the journey, said he lost both his parents to cancer. "That's the reason I also support PinkDrive – losing both parents because of cancer was not easy. It was too late when they were diagnosed with cancer.
My father had colon cancer and my mother had lung cancer," said Lasarow. The two men said if people would like to make a donation to PinkDrive they can log in to their website at www.pinkdrivestagecycletour.com or could donate R20 to PinkDrive by sending the word “PINKCYCLE” to 40158.
