At 23 years old, Alex Hawkins just started a new job, had a great boyfriend and was an active runner. She spent her free time watching Atlanta Hawks games – she was a fan since she could talk – and enjoying time with her family, chasing around her two nephews while in the midst of helping her sister prepare for a new baby.
After finding an abnormal lump on her neck in 2014, she was diagnosed with B-Cell Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, stage III.
About a week after her diagnosis, she sat in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park with her close family and friends for the Light The Night Walk, LLS’s inspirational fundraising walk.
“Even though I kept to myself most of the night, I soon realized that I walked out of that night with a whole new family cheering me on,” she said.
She went through two surgeries, and six rounds of R-Chop chemotherapy – one treatment every three weeks. Her long thick hair fell out, and her loved ones had to help her complete the simplest of everyday tasks. Throughout treatment, she always wore a Hawks Snuggie.
After receiving an outpouring of support from LLS, she wanted to give back. She started “Team Hawks,” a friends and family Light The Night Walk team, and has led it for three years.
While going through treatment, she participated in an Atlanta Hawks fundraising night, which brought more than 200 people out for the cause. That night, she was thrilled to have an opportunity to meet NBA Hall of Famer, Dominique Wilkins. She is one of his biggest fans.
This year, before Atlanta's annual Light The Night walk, LLS arranged for a special surprise meeting with Alex and Dominique – a Random Act of Light. The pair played pickup basketball while overlooking the city’s skyline.
This time, she was cancer free.
"When Dominique walked out onto the court to surprise me I was beyond excited,” said Alex. “The last time I saw him I was in the middle of treatment, scared and bald. To come full circle and see him again – now that I’m healthy – was the best surprise I could have asked for."
LLS will bring many more moments of light to those touched by blood cancer. Throughout the fall, celebrities will surprise survivors with special meetings – Random Acts of Light – to bring light to the darkness of cancer and create awareness for the critical need to find new treatments and cures for blood cancer patients. To learn more, click here.
Thousands of runners will hit the streets of Chicago this weekend for the 2016 Chicago Marathon. Before they cross the start and finish lines, they will go through an intense training program to meet one of their most challenging goals: 26.2 miles.
As a coach for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team In Training (TNT), Marie Jarrell of Chicago is the inspiring drumbeat for hundreds of Chicago marathon trainees every year, leading them down the path to fitness and providing them with inspiration along the way.
Over the past 14 years, Marie has been running and coaching on the south side of Chicago. In 2002, she joined TNT as a runner. The night before her first race, as the runners loaded up on pasta as carbo-fuel for the race, a newly-famous cancer researcher spoke to them about their contribution to his work in the lab.
Dr. Brian Druker had just discovered the most significant treatment for leukemia in a generation, one that would soon be used to treat other cancers as well. His new drug, Gleevec, has dramatically increased the survival rate for chronic myelogenous leukemia patients, up to 90% in clinical trials.
“You are my heroes,” he said to the runners who had raised millions that funded his early work on this drug. That year, the TNT Chicago Marathoners had raised $7.1 million. “That really hit me,” Marie said.
Over the years, Marie raised another $100,000 herself, and trained hundreds of new marathoners for each season of races. TNT had become a big part of her life, and it was where she made most of her closest friends. In 2014, her own breast cancer diagnosis threatened to stop her in her tracks.
“When you are diagnosed with cancer, you want to go into the doctor’s office and hear the words ‘we have a plan’ and ‘cure,’” Marie said. “Because of the work of LLS, and funding through campaigns such as Team In Training, many people do hear those words today. My breast cancer diagnosis gave me a very personal understanding of the critical work LLS is doing for blood cancer patients,” she said. “LLS also helped in my treatment as my teammates, my best friends, became my family when I got sick.”
“I didn’t miss a day of coaching due to my illness, and was back on the track with my teammates one week after my mastectomy. I coached the Chicago Marathon after my third round of chemotherapy. Getting back to coaching was my way of putting cancer in its place, and not letting it take away from me the things that I loved.”
From her coaching position toward the end of the Chicago Marathon that year, Marie recalls watching her team’s reaction to her presence. “When they saw me with my bald head at mile 24, just when they thought they couldn’t run any further, I remember the high fives and the tears,” she said. “And then they just sailed on by, with renewed energy for our cause.”
This year, Marie is TNT’s head coach at the Bank of America Chicago Marathon on October 9. TNT brings 110 marathoners from Chicago this year, and another 250 from around the country who together have raised $465,000 to fund lifesaving treatments and provide education and support to patients and families.
My life with cancer began five days before my wedding when I was 25 years old. On August 2, 2004, I was at a family birthday party when I felt a lump protruding out of my neck. After the party, I rushed over to see my stepdad who is a doctor.
Although he knew that the position of the lump at my age was not a good sign, he calmed me down and gave me antibiotics. After months of planning for the wedding, he knew how important it was for me to walk down the aisle.
On our wedding day, August 7, my arm was numb and I was unable to hold my flowers as I waited to walk down the aisle at church. More than 300 of our family and friends attended our beautiful reception. Through it all, I kept thinking that I needed something to help my pain.
After our honeymoon, I went to see an internal medicine doctor who sent me straight to the hospital. After reviewing my scans, a radiologist immediately sent me to a surgeon who told me it was lymphoma. They would conduct a biopsy to learn more, but I would need chemotherapy or radiation, or a mix of both.
I was shocked. I wondered how I would face my husband of three weeks and tell him the news. Over the next few days, I told my other family members and friends, promising everyone that I would be fine – desperate to believe that it was true.
After my biopsy and the days of waiting that followed, I was diagnosed with advanced stage Hodgkin lymphoma – or stage IIB. My treatment consisted of 12 rounds of eight-hour chemotherapy treatments known as ABVD.
Throughout my treatment and the side effects that came with it, there were many stories of love and support. Heroic nurses and medical staff stood by my side. So did my brave and often emotionally drained caretakers – my parents, sisters, extended family, friends, community members, and even strangers I had never met.
My friends organized dinners for me. I received hundreds of thoughtful cards and care packages. Over the course of months, while I endured chemo treatments, my friends flew in from out of town to hold my hand.
When I stepped out of the hospital to join the annual Light The Night walk in Tampa, I was greeted by more than 100 people who had come out to join my team. In 2005, I was honored to be named Fundraiser of the Year for LLS. The love and support I received had a huge impact on my attitude and health.
My last day of treatment was March 4, 2005. For years after, my family and friends celebrated that day as my “Carpe Diem” day. I still do something special for myself every year on this date to remind myself that I am alive and thriving.
Making it through a cancer treatment – whether it is chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, complementary therapies, or any combination of these – is something to admire.
However, living as a cancer survivor has some tough and often peculiar challenges that I was not expecting as I entered into this new phase.
Mentally, I was just beginning to process all that had happened. I attended funerals of other patients who I was treated alongside. While families were mourning the loss of their loved ones and I stood beside them to pay my respects, I felt a strange feeling, which I can only describe as guilty and ashamed.
Going to my oncologist’s office for a check- up was also difficult. I had a variety of lingering health issues but in comparison to cancer, they seemed minor. I felt selfish for taking up the doctor’s time when there were cancer patients in the waiting room.
I existed in a state of “survival” not “living” for years that followed. My friends and family who knew me before I had gotten sick, had the courage to remind me: “Kim, you forgot what it feels like to feel normal.”
I was desperately trying to squeeze back into my old life just as I had left it. When the truth was, I just was not the same person. This was when I realized I was going about things the wrong way and began to live my “new normal.”
For me personally, I did not begin to regain control of my life until I was finished with my scans and heard from my doctors that my cancer was not likely to return. That was five and a half years after my diagnosis.
Today, I have spent more than ten grateful years as a lymphoma survivor. Every day that I live as a survivor, there are scientists working tirelessly to find cures for my disease and many others. There are people fundraising in some of the most thoughtful and selfless ways so that dollars can go to find cures so that lives are spared.
Now that I have embraced being a survivor, I know that every day is a new beginning. My hope for others going through this process is that they listen to their intuition, pay attention to what their body is telling them, and when in doubt, practice gratitude!
Kimberly currently lives in Paia, Hawaii. She works as an integrated health coach and founder of EMPATH Coaching. To learn more about Kimberly’s cancer experience, visit her blog, www.empathcoaching.com
After finding an abnormal lump on her neck in 2014, she was diagnosed with B-Cell Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, stage III.
Thousands of runners will hit the streets of Chicago this weekend for the 2016 Chicago Marathon. Before they cross the start and finish lines, they will go through an intense training program to meet one of their most challenging goals: 26.2 miles.
My life with cancer began five days before my wedding when I was 25 years old. On August 2, 2004, I was at a family birthday party when I felt a lump protruding out of my neck. After the party, I rushed over to see my stepdad who is a doctor.