Tracey Tully was 35 when she was diagnosed with cancer in her lungs.
Tracey Tully was 35 when she was diagnosed with cancer in her lungs.
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“It was fluke,” Tully, the Terry’s Team Member for Sunday’s Sarnia Terry Fox Run, said of her 2019 diagnosis.
The personal fitness trainer, who grew up in Petrolia where she took part in Terry Fox Runs as a youngster in elementary school, and later in life with teams from work, went to her doctor with a lingering cough after a summer cold.
A member at the fitness center where she worked had a similar cough and told her he;d been diagnosed with pneumonia.
She said, “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, am I this silly person walking around with pneumonia’” who hasn’t had it checked out?”
The doctor sent her for an X-ray to rule out bronchitis or pneumonia and by the time Tully was pulling into her driveway after the test, the medical center had called.
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“They knew from the X-ray alone it was likely cancer,” Tully said.
She said her doctor moved quickly to order more tests and referred her to a surgeon in London. Surgery to remove the second lobe of her right lung took place soon after.
“I was good after that,” Tully said. “I didn’t have to have any chemo or any further treatment. They just keep a really good eye on me.”
A biopsy determined it was a rare cancer that often has a “bleak” outcome, but “I’m on Year 5 now and everything is continuously coming back all clear,” she said.
Tully, who’s married to an 11-year-old stepdaughter, still works as a personal trainer.
Before her diagnoses, she had “a lot of respect and admiration” for Fox and his ability to have “such a lasting impact while he was going through what he was going through.”
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Now that she’s “on the other side. . . obviously that respect and admiration has just grown,” Tully said. “It’s just incredible, what he did.”
In 1980, Fox, an 18-year-old from British Columbia who lost a leg to cancer, ran 5,373 kilometers of a cross-Canada run on an artificial limb before being forced to stop because cancer had returned.
By the time he died in June 1981, Fox had reached his goal of raising the equivalent of $1 from every Canadian for cancer research.
Since then, runs in his memory have raised more than $850 million for the Terry Fox Foundation and cancer research.
Registration for the Sarnia run begins at 8 am Sunday near the bandshell in Canatara Park, with the run starting at 9:15 am
About 330 people took part last year and raised $63,595, said local organizer Laurie Rome. “We want to beat that if we can.”
If you want to take part, or donate, visit terryfox.org and search for the Sarnia run.
Over more than 40 years, Sarnia runs have raised a total of more than $1.5 million, Rome said.
Sunday’s event includes five and 10 km routes, but it’s a non-competitive event and participants can complete as many laps as they wish running, walking or in-line skating, she said.
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