“I AM EPIC” a Live Again Story by Kymmer Crookston
I was 59 years old, and I thought about that being my last year before entering a new decade. What could I do to make turning 60 something to look forward to? I wanted to do something to prove that I was still young at heart and full of life.
I remembered being very impressed that one of my sons and his wife had participated in an Epic Relay and as a team had run 200 miles. I had never been a runner, but the idea of being “Epic” appealed to me. There was going to be an Epic Relay the next year and I wanted to be a part of it. That would be a good way to celebrate being 60.
I began to recruit my siblings, kids, their spouses and friend to get a 12-member team. I also began a 6 day a week training schedule. Running distance was the hardest thing I had ever physically done before, but I was determined to do it.
A couple of weeks before I needed to register my Epic team, I became aware that I might have cancer. The thought terrified me. I wanted to ignore the possibility, but my sweet husband encouraged me to call the doctor. I debated about registering my team because I didn’t know what the future held for me.
I decided to register my team anyway and hope for the best. In between my doctor appointments, tests, and waiting for results, I ran
When I learned that I had stage III Breast Cancer and that I was also HER 2 positive, I knew that I would have another kind of race to run. I didn’t want to give up my goal of running the Epic Relay when I turned 60. I planned on doing the best I could to train in between my surgeries to have a double mastectomy, reconstruction, chemo, and radiation treatments.
After surgeries and chemo, I had to spend days recovering, but when I got over being sick, I would go run. It made me feel good to be able to tell my chemo nurse that I ran before I came to treatment. When I had radiation treatments, I rode my bike there.
One day when I was out running, I wore a Fight Back t-shirt and a silly hat to cover my bald head. When I got home I saw that a friend had posted on Face Book that she was inspired by seeing me out running that morning, when she knew that I was fighting cancer. I decided to post my picture with this reply, “I have cancer, but cancer does not have me.”
Fighting cancer was hard. Training for the Epic Relay was hard. But now I know I can do hard things. I know that training for the Epic Relay helped me in my fight against cancer, because it let me know that cancer hadn’t gotten the best of me.
I always tried to look for the rainbows in my cancer storm, and that helped me to stay positive. On the day I turned 60, I had a chemo treatment. Chemo was helping me to be able to keep having birthdays, so I was grateful. Besides that, I could honestly say that on the day I turned 60, I didn’t have one gray hair.
I had a great team that helped me run the Epic Rely at 60 years old. I had a great team that helped me run my cancer race. With the help of so many wonderful and amazing people, I am grateful to be able to say, “I AM EPIC.”
