Expect With
Confidence
Teri Griege is the very definition of hope
By Erin Williams
When it comes to running a triathlon, seasoned athletes know that achieving a decent
finish is all about training hard and pacing
yourself.
Over time, you get to know your body’s
strengths and hardships, and what it takes to
be a better competitor. You also know when to
back off and let your body rest. But just because you know something is wrong doesn’t
mean you acknowledge it - especially when
you’re in the middle of training for your second
triathlon, like Teri Griege was in 2009.
She had completed her first Ironman race
in Louisville, Kentucky the year before and
came close to qualifying for the big competition
in Kona, Hawaii, so she decided to try again.
The race involves swimming two and fourtenths miles in open water, riding a bicycle for
112 miles, and running a twenty-six-and twotenths-mile marathon. Naturally, your body is
likely to exhibit all types of side effects.
“I was just kind of sluggish, more tired than
usual. I had some road rash from my bike that
wasn’t healing very quickly, and I had some
rectal bleeding, but I thought ‘Well, I’m riding
38
GAZELLE STL
100 miles, seventy miles, fifty miles at a time,”
she said.
She attributed it to overtraining, but when
the bleeding didn’t go away after the race, she
decided to go to a doctor.
The last thing she expected for him to uncover was stage four colon cancer with metastases to her liver.
“I would be lying if I didn’t say that initially,
I was extremely fearful with the diagnosis,” said
Teri, a former nurse who was forty-eight that
September. “To me, it wasn’t this sense of my
body letting me down, it was kind of this sense
of amazement. I did an Ironman in under fifteen hours, and fourteen days later was diagnosed with cancer all over my body. To me
that’s pretty amazing - that your body can be
so healthy and be so sick. Who would have
thought?” she contemplated.
What followed was an aggressive timeline of
radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and a colon
and liver resection, where parts of both organs
were removed. More rounds of chemotherapy
followed, but her body still had metastatic cells
inside. She now undergoes chemotherapy
treatments every other week - her routine for
the past four years - and discovered last fall
that the cancer had spread to her lungs. “I
don’t really know any different now because I
never went off chemo,” she said of what she
calls “maintenance chemo.”
Two weeks after her diagnosis, Teri’s older
sisters were prompted to get colonoscopies of
their own. Her eldest sister found out she had
precancerous polyps; her middle sister was diagnosed with stage three colon cancer.
“Nobody wants to talk about colon cancer.
Nobody wants to talk about that part of their
body...it’s embarrassing,” she said. “The reason
I am so adamant about doing this and sharing
my story is because number one, colon cancer
is the only cancer that can be prevented. And
it’s prevented by screening and having colonoscopies, which at age fifty is when you’re supposed to have one. And if you have a family
history, you have to start earlier.”
Teri is no stranger to challenge - she’s been
a recovering alcoholic for twenty-one years, and
credits the twelve-step program taught in Alcoholics Anonymous as “great tools for living, a
great outline for life - and that really, I think
played a big role in helping me accept, adjust
and walk this cancer journey a day at a time.”
She continued living her life as normally as
possible - running, raising her two teenaged
children, and realizing that in fighting this disease, she was going to need all the help she
could muster.
“Going from this woman who was training
for an Ironman... and then realizing that this
was a beast way bigger than me, and that I was
really going to have to call in and accept help
from all kinds of people - that was definitely an
eye-awakening moment,” she said.
In researching her disease, she discovered
that stage four colon cancer has a six percent,
five-year survival rate.
“Somebody told me a story about a person
that had thyroid cancer- a rare form - and they
had a one percent chance - and ]