- June 15th, 2006, 5:18 pm
#18240
Here's a cool story I found in the Atlanta fishwrap:
Cancer survivor outruns trail of tearshttp://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared ... vivor.html
By Curtis Bunn | Thursday, June 15, 2006, 12:44 PM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Looking back on it, Leigh Elliott says she is glad she had the cancer — glad she endured nine surgeries, glad she survived 15 high-level treatments of chemotherapy, glad she lost weight all the way down to 87 pounds, glad she could not walk for eight months and, ultimately, glad she ran a cross country race for Harrison that punctured the reservoir of tears.
In this high school athletic year of so much emotion over championship celebrations and painful defeats, there was not a moving moment like the one Elliott inspired when she completed a junior varsity 5K run last fall.
Picture this: Forty minutes after the competitors cleared the finish line, Elliott emerged in the distance, moving at a slow, determined pace. The entire JV team lined the route to the finish, cheering and crying as the senior cancer survivor plowed ahead.
Coach Kent Simmons had been monitoring her via radio and was stunned she was still on the course. “I hoped she’d do one lap,” he said. “But as she was coming in, I — and everyone else — had tears in my eyes.”
“You’re our hero,” read one banner that Elliott passed.
As she got closer, the crowd grew, the cheers got louder and the tears flowed heavier.
“It was amazing,” her mother, Kimberly, said. “So emotional. So prideful. What can I say? I cried the entire time.”
Leigh Elliott said she never thought of giving up, especially when she saw the scene awaiting her.
“It’s pretty hard to jog and cry at the same time,” she said. “Running a 5K is difficult enough as it is. Plus, my leg wasn’t behaving quite the way it used to.”
With the crowd screaming and tears running down faces like rain, Elliott’s focus waned and she began to cry.
“It was really important for me to finish that race,” she said. “I wanted closure on the whole thing, and that was the best way to get it. It was good to close that chapter.”
When she got to the finish line, she broke down into the embrace of her mother. “She’s been there with me through the whole ordeal,” Elliott said. Said mom: “As far as I’m concerned, she won the race.”
To get to that meet at Al Bishop Park, Elliott defied the prognosis by refusing to succumb to a potentially debilitating disease. Diagnosed at 17 with osteosarcoma — a rare cancer of the bone that was located in her tibia near her knee — Elliott’s athletic career and life were threatened. The cancer spread to 35 places in Elliott’s body, including her lungs, which complicated matters even more.
The doctors focused on getting Elliott better; she focused on getting better and back on the track.
The surgeries — nine of them — did not get her down. Prayer and faith kept her up. “You have to be vibrant and have a great attitude,” she said. “That’s what gets you through.”
Chemotherapy? “That stunk,” she said.
Her mom added: “With the high-level doses of chemo she had, her body was close to death.”
But Elliott’s mind was not, even as her wisdom teeth became so bothersome that they required surgery to be removed.
Elliott was on crutches for eight months. Her doctors recommended she stop attending school and get her GED because going to class would be too much. Elliott dismissed that notion, just as she had any other prognosis that would prevent her returning to the life she always led.
Unable to compete as before on varsity, running one last race, even for the JV, signified victory over cancer.
“Through the whole thing, Leigh was more teacher than student,” her mother said. “She showed what it’s like to not give up. She showed more than I could have imagined.”
Leigh graduated with her class — with honors — recently and earned an academic scholarship to Liberty University in Virginia, where she’ll major in nursing and minor in missionary work.
“After this experience, I want to help people,” said Leigh, who will continue periodic checkups to make sure the cancer doesn’t reappear. “Although it was horrible, it’s one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. It was really wonderful, looking back on it. There were times when I was really, really sick. But our family got even closer through this, and other people have found inspiration.
“So, how can I say cancer was a bad thing for this family? I can’t.”
- By Dalegarz1