My Day on Parliament Hill

Last Tuesday morning, just after 7, the cab dropped us off on the street. No commercial or private vehicles are allowed in front of the parliament grounds. As we walked up to the main building, I remember thinking this was an awesome site. It was so quiet and serene this early in the morning. Once we found the proper entrance, we got our security passes and found our room, 256-S Centre Block of Parliament Hill. Cool huh!

The rest of the day all happened pretty fast. I was being introduced to different people and I was doing my best to get as much information out about metastatic breast cancer as I could. The message was to raise awareness of metastatic breast cancer, to increase support and information and to have timely access to drugs to treatment. It was a lot of information to get across to each person in a very short amount of time.

Then we were called to sit down for VIP speeches and then for the remainder of our time, I was introduced to more parliamentarians and more sharing of my story. Before I knew it, it was all over … well not quite, we were given a complete tour of Parliament Hill. It was all very exciting. A photographer from the Canadian Breast Cancer Network took pictures of us on our tour. These pics will be posted on their website in a week or so. That is a good thing, because it all happened so fast, I can hardly remember the name of one person I met or one thing I saw.

At the end of it all, a cab took me back to my hotel room for a short rest and then it was a phone interview from a reporter from the Hill Times, a weekly news paper from Parliament Hill.

I was starting to feel the effects of the busy day and fatigue was setting in. I tried my best to get to bed early but all the excitement left me too pumped to sleep. Fortunately, the next day was a later start. More on that tomorrow.

Here a few pics taken with my smartphone ...