Tuesday, July 25, 2000
Armstrong is club's poster boy
By LAURA PULFER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Brilliant yellow shirt. A gun-metal gray bike. Red, white and blue flag. Lance Armstrong's victory was pictured in living color. Very big accent on the living part.
“It was a hard Tour de France,” he said in Paris Sunday. “I'm glad it's finished, and I can see more of these guys.” These guys are his 9-month-old son Luke and his wife, Kristin. He rode his bicycle 2,151 miles. And every night during those three weeks, he opened a silver clock that held a photo of his wife. Then he squeezed a button, triggering a computer chip that played his son's giggle.
This man knows what's important.
Maybe he always did, but I'm guessing life taught him some things three years ago when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He eventually had brain surgery and chemotherapy and had one testicle removed.
“My cancer recovery is still the message,” he said. “I'm healthy now, and it is still a struggle. There is no guarantee how long I'll stay healthy.”
He speaks the language of the cancer survivor. Hopeful. But wary.
When he won the Tour de France the first time, last year, he said “this is a very big victory for us.” Cancer survivors knew whom he meant. “I am part of the cancer family.”
Calling a truce
The cancer family. Some people call it “the club.” Defiantly. Laughingly.
Nikki Giovanni, poet and — not incidentally — lung cancer survivor, says she hopes to negotiate a truce, “an agreement that we will live together for another 30 years.” Meanwhile, she continues to write. Beautifully. Movingly.
People like Nikki and Lance Armstrong remind the world that cancer is not a death sentence. Better still, that people with cancer are not just marking time.
Paula Howard, whose doctors call her a miracle, managed to take a blue ribbon and trophy at the prestigious Cincinnati Flower Show between chemotherapies. “I don't think God micromanages, but there is a bigger plan. Maybe God wanted a successful survivor, to give hope to others.”
Sometimes the miracle is what happens to the people around somebody struggling with this disease.
Community battle
Paula Duncan Anderson, a Cincinnati firefighter, lost her battle against breast cancer in 1996. For more than a year, people all over town were flipping burgers, serving up vats of chili, selling cookies and doing just about anything else we could think of to keep this woman alive.
Prisoners at Lebanon Correctional Institution took up a donation. City workers gave up vacation time.
I am, I am proud to say, a member of the club. Grateful but wary. I take a proprietary interest in the achievements of people like Lance. I steal ideas from people like Nikki and the mother of six small children, who told me, “I made a deal with God that He wouldn't take me until my closets were clean. I haven't touched them in years.”
Michael J. Fox, Sean Penn and Robin Williams were in Paris, ready to party with the winner. The winner met first with a group of cancer survivors. Lance Armstrong in living color. Raising awareness. And hope. And money. The money, of course, will be devoted to our most important order of business.
Keeping new members out of the club.
E-mail Laura Pulfer at lpulfer@enquirer.com or call 768-8393.
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