During last year’s Seattle Brain Cancer Walk, Brenda Little was wearing seven stickers, each representing a person she knew who had or has brain cancer.

One of those people was her husband Michael Little, who died of the disease in 2005. He was 41.

Next Saturday, the Renton resident will take to the Mercer Island High School track for the second anniversary of the walk. She’ll sport the same number of stickers as last year.

“It’s amazing how many people, if you think about it, have been touched by it and touched your life,” Brenda says of brain cancer.

The Seattle Brain Cancer Walk was dreamed up by Brenda’s neighbor Kim Hogle in fall 2007, just a year before the inaugural walk last fall. Sponsored by Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, the walk benefits the Center for Advanced Brain Tumor Treatment at Swedish’s Neuroscience Institute.

More than 500 people registered for last year’s walk and about $120,000 was raised.

“It was fast and incredible and … it was just so amazing,” Brenda says. “We had a beautiful day.”

More than 520 people are already registered for this year’s walk.

That’s great news for Brenda, a planning committee member and an honorary chairperson for the walk.

“We just need to get the word out and get people aware that there is a treatment center at Swedish, for one thing, and that a lot of people are working for a better treatment plan for patients and also doing research,” Brenda says.

Money needs to be raised and cures developed for the 220,000 Americans — 1,200 Pacific Northwesterners — diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor each year, Brenda says.

She doesn’t want to add more stickers to the seven she already wears.

Her seven represent friends and neighbors, and of course, Mike. Last Wednesday would have been the couple’s 20th wedding anniversary.

“There’s about seven people I walk for, but mainly because of Mike,” Brenda says.

A tumor was discovered in the middle of Mike’s brain just before Thanksgiving 2003. Doctors didn’t know much about the tumor and how it would affect Mike, but they did know that its location made surgery impossible.

In early 2005, doctors used five weeks of radiation to try to shrink the mass.

But in fall 2005 the tumor grew again. Mike was admitted to the hospital toward the end of October of that year and died Nov. 6, 2005.

“There wasn’t anything they could do,” Brenda says.

Doctors never told Mike or Brenda how long Mike had to live, which made it harder when he became sick so fast.

“I was never really expecting him to die, so that part of it was really hard,” Brenda recalls.

Her husband of 16 1/2 years was intelligent, “extremely funny,” and a gifted writer, Brenda says.