The American Cancer Society estimates 178,480 women in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 40,460 will die from the disease this year.

That's 3,569 women diagnosed and then 809 women who die on average per state, per year. Carry that average a little further, and in each Oregon county, 99 women will learn they have breast cancer each year, and 23 will die.

I've always been a statistics person. My brain automatically does the math when I read numbers. But cancer statistics always escape me. The numbers are so huge. And in the end, those huge numbers are just numbers.

As we do every year, we've talked in the newsroom here for weeks about our coverage of the Relay for Life, this annual Cancer Society fundraiser. We plan who's going to write the preview stories and keep track of schedules. We arrange for photographers and marvel every year at the tremendous amount of effort and heart hundreds of people pour into the event.

They are the faces of those numbers.

And those numbers have never affected me personally, not even my close family, until Wednesday.

That realization started to come two and a half weeks ago, as the phone calls went out across the country and, with the news, my family began our relay through life.

My mom arrived in Bend that day to visit her two sisters, never imagining she would be making some of those calls. Within a day the three sisters were posing for pictures, and within another day my aunt, Chou Chou, was sinking into bed.

Some of us know the story behind her name. She got new shoes as a toddler and went around a gathering of adults while stark naked, making sure they saw her new shoes. And the name stuck through six decades.

A little more than a month ago, my aunt was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She had breast cancer a couple years ago. I learned about it only after she had it, after she quietly went through her chemotherapy. After it was gone, she moved on with life.

My mom's side of the family is small, so two weeks ago that news traveled fast. It sounded almost cliche - the experts' declaration that Chou Chou had six months to live. And within days and more phone calls, that six months became a jarring a week - then a threatening day.

We all began our relay to Bend, from the beach, across the mountains and states. And last weekend we were there. We looked at pictures, my cousins and I. I kept seeing them as we sat - Steve and Beth were in her face, in my uncles' and grandparents' faces.

I spent my first sleepover I recall away from my parents at their house on Saginaw Avenue in Bend. I was 7. My aunt and uncle were practicing parenthood, I suppose. Chou Chou and I made Gumpert's Goo, a peanut butter and jam concoction. We explored her house, her closets. We played games.

Last weekend, my other aunt, my cousins and I flipped through pages in photo albums. There was the bleached blond hair from the 1960s. Silliness.

Last summer, my husband, my little boys and I spent almost a week with Chou Chou and my uncle at the family cabin that's been my mom's family destination for 60 years. My aunt and I hung out. We planned meals. We talked. There was the time as a 10-year-old, when my hamster came with us to the cabin. Chou Chou remembered the summer my mom and dad built bird houses and stuck them in the trees. She and my boys played games last summer.

And last month, she and I talked about visiting her and my uncle at the cabin this July.

On Wednesday morning, my aunt Chou Chou, Carol Ramsey, died of breast cancer.

I can't help but think about those statistics. They still are just numbers.

They won't stay with me, not as much as looking at newspaper clips of dances, an engagement. Of laughing with her family at the silliness in those photos.

And all the while, Chou Chou was there in the edges of our conversation as we went on that relay through life.

(Elise Hamner is The World's city editor. She can be reached at 269-1222, ext. 239; or by e-mail at ehamner@theworldlink.com.)