Survivor Story

Below is an article published in an edition of Runner’s World Magazine. It is yet another reminder that sport can and does play a key role in the research and treatment of diseases. And another reminder of what the human spirit is capable of.

In May 2004, Bill Crews finished the worst six months of his life. a competitive swimmer and coach, Crews had been training for his first triathlon when his shoulder got sore. He went to the doctor thinking he had torn a rotator cuff and came out learning he had cancer.

The 37-year-old father of two often rode his bike to his office north of Houston, where he works as a systems advisor. Now he and his wife, Dana-Sue, also a competitive swimmer, would be driving 25 miles back and forth to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Bill had stage-four non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, an aggressive cancer of the blood that strikes 70,000 Americans annually and kills 20,000. His doctor prescribed chemotherapy that included Rituxan, an immunotherapy that attacks the cancer cells and a highly toxic chemical that cancer patients call “Red Devil,” which must be slowly dripped into the heart through a catheter for 48 hours. Crews could feel each drop of heat in his heart. “I was exhausted and sick,” he says. “I often wondered if I would survive.”

Once the worst of his treatments were over, Dana-Sue urged him to join the runners they had seen in the neighborhood park. Their purple and white shirts said Team in Training. Bald from chemotherapy, Bill was self-conscious about going to a meeting. “It’s the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society,” Dana-Sue said. “I think they can handle a bald guy.”

Bill discovered that Team in Training (TNT) has trained 360,000 people to compete in endurance events and has raised $850 million in the process. That money had helped fund the advanced chemotherapy that saved his life.

“I left my first meeting with a training group and a support group, one that would help me get my life back,” he says.

Five months later, Bill finished his first sprint triathlon (750-meter swim, 12-mile bike, 3.1-mile run). While undergoing a less intensive form of chemotherapy, he moved up to the Olympic and the half-Ironman distances. In January 2005, he ran the Houston Half-Marathon, and he’s done the full 26.2 every year since.

Cancer has transformed the entire family. Dana-Sue has written a children’s book explaining how their kids, Morgan and Dylan, helped their dad fight cancer with love and prayers. Her royalties go to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. She has also started competing in triathlons and marathons and coaches TNT runners. Dylan and Morgan, now 10 and 7, completed their first kids’ triathlon when they were just 7 and 4.

Bill and Dana-Sue are what the society calls “first connectors.” They talk to patients and their families about what to expect. They have created a Web site with a diary of their fight against cancer and have raised $40,000 for the society. Both consider Bill’s cancer a blessing.

“After cancer, you see things a little differently,” Bill says. “We don’t believe that God has caused my cancer but that he’s using it to open doors that never would have been opened before.”

Most notably: the Ironman. In April, Bill and Dana-Sue completed their first 140-mile-long endurance event (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, 26.2-mile run) in Tempe, Arizona. The temperature for the cycling portion was 95° F, with heavy wind gusts. “People were crashing their bikes and throwing up,” says Dana-Sue. “But it wasn’t nearly as scary as driving home from the hospital on a flooded freeway at night with your husband throwing up out the back window.” Bill came in at 15 hours, 37 minutes, and 55 seconds, about 27 minutes ahead of his wife.

Now 41, Bill is in the best shape of his life. This fall, he’ll run the San Antonio Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon and will become a certified triathlon coach. In January, he’ll start coaching for TNT. His sandy hair has grown back, and he sports a graying goatee and a twinkle in his eye. Everything does look a little different after cancer, especially that word on the back of his Ironman T-shirt: Finisher.