Part 3 of 3: Every year, the Syracuse community gathers in the Carrier Dome to celebrate cancer survivors, honor loved ones lost to the disease and fight back to end cancer. Part Three of this series acknowledges those who fight for the cure.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: Relay For Life

WHERE: Carrier Dome

WHEN: 6 p.m. Saturday to 5 a.m. Sunday

HOW MUCH: $20 entrance fee

The abnormal cells grow uncontrollably. They first arrive innocently enough, manifesting themselves as an unusual lump barely worth mentioning. Or a cough that lasts a little too long. Or a bruise that, for some reason, just hasn’t gone away.

The cells spread, invading other parts of the body, destroying tissues in their way. They might travel through a lymph or hide in a white blood cell. Eventually, they announce themselves by ravaging the body they’ve invaded. Too often, they end a life.

Not everyone is willing to sit back and watch.

***

The camaraderie that came from supporting a good cause with friends marked Sofia Mejias’ last two years at Relay For Life. She remembers climbing onto a tall friend’s shoulders, playing chicken with her fraternity brothers and sisters, convincing a friend her crooked haircut looked good after she donated hair.

This year makes her nervous, though, after her father dealt with cancer for the second time.

‘I don’t know how emotional I’ll get, and I don’t really know if I’m OK with letting people see me that emotional,’ said Mejias, a junior ceramics major. ‘Since he’s been hit with it twice, I don’t know if I’ll really be able to handle it as much.’

Mejias has fundraised for Relay since she was a freshman. But by sophomore year, the fight for the cure became personal. Her father was diagnosed with prostate cancer and only told his family when he went in for surgery. His treatments were successful. This year, though, doctors discovered an obstruction in his bile duct that turned out to be cancer yet again.

The cancer is currently out of his system, and Mejias’ father continues to receive regular chemotherapy treatment.

Mejias leads the pack in Relay donations. She has raised $8,540 as of Wednesday, according to the Relay website, nearly twice the amount as the No. 2 top participant.

Each year she participates, she surpasses her personal fundraising goal. Last month, when she was a few hundred dollars short of her $8,000 goal, she began announcing prizes on Facebook — mugs and cups she made herself — for the first 20 people to donate $15.

‘I’m sure when my dad was a kid he never thought that he was going to get cancer,’ Mejias said. ‘I never thought that he was going to get cancer. You don’t know who’s going to be affected by it, and it’s just really good to help out other people and be a little selfless sometimes. I just feel better about myself when I know that I’m helping a bigger cause.’

While working at New York City’s Memorial Sloane-Kettering Cancer Center, Mejias saw devastated families deal with a child’s death from cancer. Their devastation pushes her to fight for the cure, as does her father. A high survival rate isn’t enough.

‘I definitely think we have to fight to the point where we find a cure,’ Mejias said. ‘Everybody’s important. Everybody makes an impact on the world. Life’s too short to live it in sickness. It just needs to go away. Cancer just needs to end. We can fight cancer. It’s doable.’

***

Recurring thoughts pass through Carmen Genovese’s mind every day. What does it mean if I develop a cough tomorrow? Does it mean my cancer is back or does it mean I just have a cold?

As each year passes, though, he wonders less if he will live to see his 30^th birthday.

The 26-year-old graduate student in clinical mental health counseling was diagnosed in February 2006 with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma — just four months after his wife, Emily, went into remission from her own cancer. Life was on hold. Life was surreal.

‘If you get diagnosed like I did in my 20s, it totally shapes your career,’ Genovese said. ‘It affects your relationships. You’re at that point where you’re supposed to be exiting your family of origin and launching into your own life. It resets a lot of that.’

Genovese has raised $3,155 as of Wednesday, making him SU’s No. 3 fundraiser at Relay. The cause is the most important one he will fight. Giving back, he said, was necessary.

‘I realize that I’m lucky to have survived, and I’m lucky to have the opportunities to go back to school and have a shot at a career, and one that I actually love,’ he said. ‘So I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon.’

He met Emily at Rochester Institute of Technology, where he was studying to become an engineer. Soon after they were engaged, Emily went home to spend the summer with her family and within a week was diagnosed with Leukemia.

The time spent taking care of his wife, and eventually himself, helped Genovese realize how he wanted to spend the rest of his life.

He didn’t want to spend it behind a desk. Or in a cubicle. Or as the self-proclaimed shy and quiet guy. He didn’t care if he was rich. Just short of earning an engineering degree, Genovese made the decision to become a counselor.

‘I felt that because I had these experiences as both a survivor and a caregiver that I’d be in kind of a unique position to help other young adult cancer survivors,’ Genovese said.

He hopes to eventually work in a hospital setting, where he can counsel cancer patients and their families. He wants to spend his career fighting back.

***

One day this semester in her philosophy class, Sara Freund’s professor stopped in the middle of a lesson to announce a $200 donation to her Relay cause. The freshman psychology and writing major had emailed him earlier asking for a small donation, as she had with other professors and students.

‘I was just so shocked because that’s not something that people do,’ Freund said. ‘They don’t just randomly donate $200, especially if there’s not a personal relationship there. And that’s a lot of money to pledge.’

As of Wednesday, Freund has raised $2,525, making her the No. 6 fundraiser out of 2,126 registered participants.

This weekend will be her seventh Relay, but her first at SU. At her Florida high school, she fundraised each year for Relay, often as a team captain.

‘It just makes me feel so good when people actually take the time out of their day to go and donate money,’ she said. ‘And I tell them every time, it really means so much to me.’

Relay is unique because it culminates its fundraising season with a final event, Freund said. Everyone is working toward the same goal. Everyone is trying to beat cancer. But it’s more than just raising money, she said.

‘When people donate, they’re just really supportive,’ Freund said. ‘It lets me know that people really care about this, and I’m not the only one thinking about it.’

She isn’t the only one who thinks about it. Almost a fifth of SU’s student population camps out in the Carrier Dome one night a year to fight back against cancer.

***

Behind the scenes at Relay are Kelsie Bouchard and Janae DeRusso, co-chairs of the annual event.

They can’t go to the Dome without identifying it with Relay For Life, DeRusso said.

When the lights are off and the luminarias lit, when the music plays, and when ‘hope’ and ‘cure’ light up the stands, everything is on pause for DeRusso.

‘That moment to me is just so special because of all the work we’ve done the last 10 months to get to this point,’ she said. ‘Now we’re sitting back and we’re with 2,000 friends and we’re really making a difference. It’s just so different from any other fundraiser or event you could be a part of.’

Bouchard will cap off a sleepless week with a sleepless Saturday night. The energy and emotion she has poured into fighting back for the past four years keep her from feeling tired.

‘Literally for me, it’s electrifying,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel anything less than excited because I know that what we’re doing is making a difference, and I’m so proud to see our diverse campus community come together. Our campus is doing its best this weekend to make a difference, to cause change.’

***

Every year, a handful of students go well beyond Relay’s request to raise just $100. They don’t do it to rank on a list. They do it to get a dollar closer to the cure. Each person does it to celebrate those who have conquered cancer, to remember the lives of loved ones lost too soon and to fight back against a disease that has touched his or her life in one way or another.

blbump@syr.edu

Published on April 6, 2011 at 12:00 pm