Two Mission Moments

Yesterday at training we had two mission moments. The first came from our Shamrock teammate Nancy. She is a Hodgkin lymphoma survivor training for her first half-marathon, and she is also a teacher. She talked about a 9th grade student with leukemia and how ill the girl has been, how many month she has spent in the hospital. It is awful hearing about kids who are sick - this girl should be playing sports, hanging out with friends, participating in school activities, and so forth. She is now back at school and doing much better, which was good to hear. It was one more reminder of why we have all sacrificed so much to do Team in Training, but how anything we have gone through are minor compared to the experiences of people with cancer.

Our second mission moment came at the Shamrock Send-off breakfast at Vicki's home. Walk Coach (and Nashville teammate) Kristi also is a Hodgkin lymphoma survivor, and she was pregnant with her youngest son at the time. She got radiation and chemotherapy, both pretty tough things to go through. This was about 14 years ago. A few months back she noticed a lump on her neck. To cut a long story short, she had surgery a few weeks ago and it was thyroid cancer - almost certainly caused by her radiation. Kristi is going to need no further treatment except for a single radioactive injection. Of course she will need to be on medications to replace the thyroid function for the rest of her life. But the point is that we need to develop treatments that don't cause serious medical conditions later in life. Anyone who has received radiation and chemo is at a higher risk of contracting leukemia and other cancers.

Thanks Kristi and Nancy for two more reminders about the importance of developing more effective and humane treatments for cancer.