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  • Tribune-Star/Jim Avelis Survivors: Kelsey Carter was a student of Laura Boyce. The two cancer survivors were at the Clay County Relay For Life on Saturday.

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  • Rachel Romas

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  • Tribune-Star/Jim Avelis Support staff: Cancer survivor Robert Gillin is flanked by his daughters Pamela Gaskill and Chris Schurick. They were taking part in the Clay County Relay For Life on Saturday afternoon.

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  • Tribune-Star/Jim Avelis Connections: Laura Boyce walks in the beginning of Clay County's Relay For Life on Saturday afternoon. With her is her son, Tribune-Star reporter Brian Boyce.

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May 13, 2012

MOTHER’S DAY: Walking in a race against cancer

Survivors understand paths they’ve taken, steps still ahead

Brian Boyce The Tribune-Star

BRAZIL — Twenty years ago when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, the first concern she expressed to the doctor was that it might ruin my senior year in high school.

Her own survival was notches down the list.

Rachel Romas, herself a 23-year survivor of childhood cancer, can understand.

And so, Saturday’s Clay County Relay for Life carried special meaning to Romas, as it falls on Mother’s Day weekend.

“We have a lot of moms in the community that have had cancer,” said Romas, an American Cancer Society community representative. “My parents are here, too.”

She said the issue comes down to mothers, sons, sisters, daughters and dads.

The survivor’s walk commenced at 12:30 p.m. and the event runs through this morning in Brazil’s Forest Park.

The Vigo County community’s Relay for Life will be July 21 and 22 at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

All year round, these events fill tracks with mothers and the reasons they lived to tell their stories.

Carrol Evans and Susan Piatt can understand.

The daughter of a survivor, Evans chaired this year’s event, the 16th annual in Clay County. When something threatens one’s mother, the whole family’s down for the fight.

“Absolutely,” Evans said, describing the dynamic in her own group, where multiple members have suffered the disease. “Some cancers run [in] families.”

Piatt, who shared a lap in the walk as a caregiver, said support is important for all involved.

“To lift the person dealing with cancer is one of the ways you can help them survive. Lift them up,” she said.

Laura Boyce — my mother — can understand.

But walking about the track with her and the friends with whom she’s shared support these last two decades, the irony was striking, that so many of the survivors were saved because theirs aren’t the lives for which they fight.

The fact of the matter is, cancer is supposed to win, and all too often it does. It’s not the second-leading cause of U.S. deaths without reason, and once in that ring, one quickly learns how heavily stacked the odds are against them.

But as the doctor told Mom, when it comes to statistics, there’s really only one number that matters. For her, there were a lot more numbers than that, including names such as Brian, Micah and Erin.

Saturday, I joined Mom as a caregiver. I couldn’t help recalling 20 years ago I escorted her around a track just up the road at Northview High School for the football team’s senior night. The week before that home game, inside the locker room of Greencastle High School, coach Jerry Anderson prefaced our normal pregame prayer with a mention of her condition, and the team offered a moment of silence.

From the announcement of her diagnosis at the school where she teaches, to her treatments today, family and friends have been immersed in each others’ fights.

Twenty years ago, I never went hungry though Mom couldn’t cook for a while after the surgery. Church members and neighbors didn’t bother to ask if they could bring food, they just did. Mom had always done that before, and she still does to this day.

One of the problems Mom has is cancer. But the biggest problem cancer has is a network of mothers.

And they’re willing to do their homework. Years ago, Mom began participating in what were then experimental treatments offered at the Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis. And for the better part of 20 years, she’s driven monthly to the north side of Indianapolis for a series of shots that make her bones burn with pain.

The will to live is so deep that she stops in Indy for her shot on the way to Pittsburgh to visit her own mother in assisted care.

My brother’s house in Maryland, my sister’s in Minnesota, and any other destination with family or friend, they’ve all been a target toward which she’s driven her van non-stop, all on the other side of a shot which causes a solid 24 hours of nausea.

And if, in 1992, she had no intention of cancer ruining whatever glory there was to be in my senior year, that plague, and its championships statistics notwithstanding, has long since met its match in her three grandchildren who live 15 hours to the east and north.

Pat Krider can understand.

The grandmother of 12 wore a survivor’s T-shirt on Saturday, proudly announcing her status to the crowd. A teacher at Northview High School, she said her students and grandkids give her reason to live.

Those who know my siblings and me errantly use terms like willpower. Frankly, I’ve always thought us slackers. Mom still schedules her treatments so as not to miss class with her students, the same as she did her surgery and recovery 20 years ago.

Walking around the track with me, the 64-year-old grandmother didn’t mind the extra lap. She seemed quite happy to believe I’d taken off from work to participate, not aware my editor, a grandmother herself, had afforded me the opportunity to write a first-person story for the 20-year anniversary.

And the picture Mom thought was going on Facebook is now in her delivery box on newsprint this morning, hopefully better than the scribbles of stories I left on the kitchen table at night for her to find the next day more than 30 years ago.

Kelsey Carter can understand.

Not a mother herself, Carter is a 20-year leukemia survivor, but she too joined the lap for caregivers alongside her grandfather, Fred Bennett, who now faces the same disease she did at the age of 2. Her parents, Brenda and Steve Carter, are active in events such as Relay for Life, she said.

“I’m very family-oriented,” she remarked, noting the power of families in establishing a reason to live.

Cancer is never really gone, it’s in remission. It’s an ongoing fight, and cancer or no, we all pass on eventually. These days Mom doesn’t worry about my prom plans. Instead, she’s busy planning trips to see grandchildren Cole, Jocelyn and Ben, none of whom are old enough to spell “diagnosis.”

And drive across the country to see them she does, after getting her treatment. We’re headed to Maryland in a couple weeks, and Minnesota again in July.

If I were diagnosed with cancer tomorrow, the last concern on my mind would be someone else’s first birthday party, or anybody’s tooth. Yet there’s no doubt that I’d survive, regardless of the diagnosis or odds, primarily because my mom doesn’t understand statistics stacked against me.

Saturday afternoon, it was tough to gauge the number of participants in the Clay County Relay for Life. But none of the survivors seemed to be much good at considering statistics either.



Brian Boyce can be reached at 812-231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.

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