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CANCER-RIDE Aug-26-2004 (840 words) With photo. xxxn
Three-time cancer survivor to bike cross-country with Lance Armstrong
By Jennifer Williams
Catholic News Service
ELKRIDGE, Md. (CNS) -- Thirty-four-year-old Kristen Adelman knows what it's like to fight.
Whether it's running a 100-mile race in the mountainous region of Loudenville, Ohio, as she did this June, or outracing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma three times in the past four years, the parishioner and teacher at St. Augustine in Elkridge has demonstrated tenacity, a remarkable zest for life and strong faith.
"If your mind can conceive it, your body can achieve it" is the motto of the 5-foot-6-inch teacher with curly dark-brown hair and a ready smile.
The next step in her journey is a cross-country bike tour with cyclist Lance Armstrong and other cancer survivors, doctors and nurses. Called the Bristol-Myers Squibb Tour of Hope, the tour begins Oct. 1 in Los Angeles and will conclude 3,500 miles later on Oct. 9 in Washington.
Adelman, who teaches physical education, algebra and religion at St. Augustine School, was 30 and in great shape when she was diagnosed with cancer in 2000.
"When I found out it was cancer, my first thought was that my faith has gotten me through many, many, many difficult things, even beyond cancer," she said. "So I said, 'OK, God, what do we have to do to get through this?'"
Before her treatment began, Adelman bought a Trek 5200 bicycle, the same model Armstrong rode when he won the 2000 Tour de France. Although she couldn't ride it then, she knew her dream bike would be waiting for her.
Her first course of treatment consisted of six rounds of chemotherapy. Before they were over, doctors gave her the news the tumor had begun growing again.
"This was a really bad sign," Adelman told The Catholic Review, Baltimore archdiocesan newspaper, as she sat in her Elkridge apartment recently.
She then went to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where doctors recommended a stem-cell transplant, a procedure with a 50 percent mortality rate.
"I prayed about it and I honestly believed God wanted me to get that transplant," she said.
She was so positive and strong-willed that she had a treadmill put in her hospital room. "They thought I was crazy," said Adelman, who ran 26.2 miles during her hospital stay. "It gave me a reason to get out of bed every day."
The stem-cell transplant was followed by six more weeks of radiation. Even though her chest would burn and she could barely breathe, Adelman was competing in triathlons within six months. "I don't know why I didn't stop," she said.
Adelman remembers the day before her six-month checkup. "I was running," the teacher said. "It was a beautiful day and I remember being very irritated about having to go to the doctor."
But the cancer had returned. Adelman was now faced with an aggressive cancer that had become resistant to chemotherapy.
"I was a train wreck," she said. "I couldn't stop crying for a week and a half."
It was a passage from "A Bend in the Road" by Nicholas Sparks that helped her to look at things differently. "It said something about the fact that all these things we encounter in our lives are from God," Adelman said. "I thought, 'You know what? If this is what God wants me to do, then I'll get up and I'll do it and I'll do it as well as I can do anything else."
Doctors told her she could undergo another type of stem-cell transplant, if she could find a perfect match. The odds were slim but Adelman's only sibling, her older brother, Jeff, was a perfect match. She credits him with saving her life.
Then money became an issue when the insurance company refused to pay for the costly procedure. But her fears were allayed when Father Gerard J. Bowen, pastor of St. Augustine, said the parish would raise the money.
While the church's generosity was "unbelievable" to Adelman, she discovered she was eligible to participate in a clinical trial with the National Cancer Institute at no cost.
"I was very beaten up at this point, but still very hopeful," she said.
Although most people cannot physically survive two transplants, she prevailed. "That's why I know it was all God," said the cyclist, who has a sign on her light switch that reads, "Jesus, walk with me today."
But after the procedure, Adelman was told that the cancer had come back yet again. Doctors prescribed three more rounds of chemotherapy followed by another dose of her brother's stem cells.
The day before she was to start her chemotherapy, Adelman and a friend rode their bikes 150 miles along the Eastern Shore. She also had a stationary bike put in her hospital room and rode it some 100 miles.
Although it was difficult, she continued to do marathons and long hikes while undergoing chemotherapy.
Fortunately, the procedure was effective and the cancer has now been in remission for the past 19 months.
"Having cancer changed my life for the better," Adelman said. "Not a moment goes by that I'm not like, 'Thank you, God.'"
END
Copyright (c) 2004 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service.
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