Sometimes it takes a health scare with a loved one to set a person straight, and for Burnaby's Ralph Luongo, that scare came when his father was diagnosed with colon cancer.
Luongo's hardworking father - the easy-going family provider, who was happy with a piece of cheese and a glass of wine - was undergoing treatment for colon cancer in the late 1990s. It was enough to prompt Luongo to have his own blood tested, and sure enough, he also had colon cancer.
"What I can remember is all of a sudden the doctor said, 'You have a polyp, it's cancerous,' and I'm thinking: Is this the end?" says the longshoreman.
But it wasn't – at least for him.
Luongo's father wasn't so fortunate and passed away a couple of years later. Luongo, now 52, is in remission and spending this Father's Day cycling more than 200 kilometres in the Ride to Conquer Cancer, in memory of his father. He's been training two to three times a week, going to spin classes and cycling with other teams training for the fundraiser.
For Luongo, cancer has become somewhat ubiquitous.
"Through life itself, as you move on, as days go by, somewhere you're going to meet somebody, whether a relative or friend, somewhere they will be touched by cancer," he says. "There's no avoiding it."
It's not lost on Luongo that he survived the same cancer that took his father's life.
"I think that if he was to get checked up earlier, it could have been caught," he says. "I feel lucky I survived. I feel sad my dad passed away."
On June 14 and 15, during the gruelling 240-kilometre route from Vancouver to Seattle, Luongo will be thinking of his dad.
"Just that I miss him, that I wish he were here," he says.
To donate to Luongo's campaign, go to va14.conquercancer.ca, click on Donate, and type "Ralph Luongo" in the search bar. His goal is to raise $4,500, and at press time, he was at $4,060.
The money raised goes to the B.C. Cancer Foundation, the fundraising arm of the B.C. Cancer Agency, which focuses on cancer-related care and research.
