How sweet it is for cancer survivor

Parham, right, with friend Helen Carpenter took part in the National Race for the Cure in Washington

June 3, 2000
Web posted at: 8:50 p.m. EDT (0050 GMT)

In this story: 'I don't rule, I rock!' 'I'm going to run' RELATED STORIES, SITES

From Correspondent Kathleen Koch.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Although 46,000 women die each year from breast cancer, the disease is now being seen as chronic, rather than fatal.

In Washington, D.C. on Saturday thousands of women took part in the national Race for the Cure. Some 7,500 of them wore pink T-shirts, signifying they were on Team Hope -- the cancer survivors.

MESSAGE BOARD Life with breast cancer    BREAST CANCER description risk symptoms treatment prevention Choose a link above to learn more about breast cancer. Source: WebMD

It was two years ago that four words from a doctor changed the life of one of Saturday's walkers, 32-year-old Jane Parham, from Virginia. He told her, "You have breast cancer."

Parham admitted, "I cried and then I decided I had to get it together. You know, I am going to be the way I am."

She decided not just to beat the disease that will strike more than 175,000 U.S. women this year, but to face it with humor. On Saturday, she celebrated her success by walking in the Race for the Cure.

On her best friend's race tag was the photograph taken after Parham's last chemotherapy treatment.

"She has a lot of friends and they had come over to decorate her (bald) head with sequins or markers," said Helen Carpenter.

"This one says 'Bye, cancer, Jane rules.'"

Parham quips, "I don't rule, I rock!"

She is ever optimistic and emotional about earning the right to wear the race's pink T-shirt. "It's just so overwhelming. It's a feeling of happiness ... look at all the people who are down here to support this."

Along the 3.1-mile (5-kilometer) course there was plenty of time to reminisce.

Parham faced her cancer with humor, allowing her friends to decorate her head with sequins and markers

Carpenter recalls, "Her attitude in the beginning was 'You know what, we're just going to make every day fun and I'm going to make sure that I make this into something that makes me grow and learn.'

"Rather than taking this as this big, devastating tragedy, she turned it into something else. And she really survived it with panache."

Parham also had to mourn during her therapy. "My mother died of cancer -- a really rare form before I was diagnosed. It's really hard to go through it without a mother."

Parham and friends took an hour and 40 minutes to finish Saturday's race. Next year, she said, she will run in the race, not walk.

"I'm going to train and I'm going to run," she said.

Parham says her mother would be proud that her daughter has not only survived the disease but is thriving.

"Surviving is a wonderful thing, but thriving from it is better," Parham said.

"It's better. It's sweeter."

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Race for the Cure
American Cancer Society's Breast Cancer Resource Center
National Cancer Institute
Cancer Care
Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation

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