I salute you Megan for walking and fighting and facing the journey of cancer. And, equally so, I salute you Matt for walking and fighting and facing this journey w/ your partner.
These are my friends! I actually know someone that this newspaper mentions! Imagine that! Way to go Hutchinson-Krings!
April 17, 2008
By STEPHANIE FOSNIGHT
It sounds like the stuff of soap operas–a young, engaged couple gets into a rollover automobile accident and ends up in the hospital. Their injuries are minor but doctors discover a mass in the woman’s chest and she’s diagnosed with cancer one week before her wedding.
In the soap opera version, the young woman would most likely die. In this true story, however, Megan Hutchinson and Matt Krings celebrated their wedding with real joy and then got down to the business of beating cancer.
Megan Hutchinson and her husband Matt Krings of Evanston run at a local park. Megan is a Hodgkin’s lymphoma cancer survivor who has been in remission for two years.
(Joel Wintermantle/For Pioneer Press)
Three years later, Megan Hutchinson is not only a lymphoma survivor but also a tried-and-true endurance athlete with a marathon and triathlon under her belt. She’s even planning on competing in a half Ironman race this year. And what began as a quest to get back in shape and provide emotional healing has turned into an avenue for raising funds and awareness of blood cancer research.
“Lymphoma and leukemia are base cancers,” said Hutchinson, now 30. “Any research done on these two cancers impacts research on all kinds of cancers.”
As awful as it was watching his new wife go through chemotherapy and radiation during their first year of marriage, Krings said he’s grateful for the body of research that contributed to Hutchinson’s survival, since Hodgkin’s disease, her type of lymphoma, is considered one of the most treatable forms of cancer.
In fact, when he saw what a powerful experience it was for his wife to complete the Chicago marathon in October 2006 and raise $1,500 for lymphoma and leukemia research, he decided to join her for triathlon training last year.
Hutchinson and Krings prepared for the classic endurance event by partnering with Team in Training, a fundraising and sports training arm of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Team in Training helped the Evanston couple get ready to swim, bike and run, and also provided creative ideas for raising cancer research money. Together the duo raised nearly $5,000 for the Society when they competed in the Chicago triathlon last August.
“When I was a kid, if you had to go through chemo you’d have to live at a hospital and it’s not that way anymore because of the research,” Krings said. “It’s incredible how much of a better place we’re in just because of the work done by the scientific community.”
Diagnosis
Shortly before their wedding in the summer of 2005, Hutchinson and Krings led a team of teenagers who were on a church mission trip doing home repair in Appalachia. In a frightening automobile accident, the 15-passenger van rolled over but, luckily, there were only a few minor injuries to the kids and staff. Still, Hutchinson and Krings headed to the hospital, anyway, just to be on the safe side.
“The doctor did a chest x-ray on me and found a mass in my chest,” Hutchinson recalled. “He said it could be Hodgkin’s disease, something else or nothing.”
The doctor sent her for a follow-up appointment. Back in Chicago, the oncologist confirmed stage-2 Hodgkin’s disease, since the cancer had spread to different areas around her chest and was in her neck.
However, Hutchinson had a textbook case of the disease and an 80 percent chance of survival, especially since they caught the cancer before it spread further.
“I didn’t have any symptoms,” Hutchinson said. “If it hadn’t been for that wreck, I wouldn’t have been diagnosed.”
A week later, Hutchinson and Krings were married and insisted on a joyful celebration, despite the diagnosis. The love and emotional energy they received from their family and friends was a powerful antidote to the days ahead, Hutchinson said. It also was a day to affirm their commitment to one another.
“It was fantastic because we were able to just show our love for each other in the middle of all that was going on,” Krings said. “A life-threatening illness really puts all the things they say about being married for the rest of your life into a different perspective.”
Treatment
Two weeks later Hutchinson started her six rounds of chemotherapy treatments, then followed that up with radiation. Nine months later the cancer was gone and she was a survivor.
Yet Hutchinson felt out of touch with her body and dazed by all that had happened, from the myriad doctors’ appointments to strange symptoms like bone pain from special drugs that stimulated her immune system.
“Pain, frustration and anger from having gone through the experience and feeling like my body wasn’t my own were really fresh,” she said. “I refer to cancer as ‘cellular mutiny.’ My cells had turned on me.”
Plus, Hutchinson was taking steroids because of lung damage caused by the chemotherapy, so she had tons of energy. She decided to pursue physical and emotional healing by running. The first challenge she set herself was running in the March 2006 Shamrock Shuffle 8K.
Marathon
“At the end of May 2006, I started training for the marathon because I wanted to feel normal again, and I didn’t think of it as something ridiculously hard because I was on steroids and had super-human strength,” Hutchinson said. “It wasn’t until after I stopped taking them that I wondered just what I had signed up to do.”
Fortunately, by that time Hutchinson had discovered Team in Training. She joined the program and began running with others who wanted to support cancer research. One couple was training for the marathon because their young son had cancer. Tragically, the boy died before the event, but his mother kept on training, and her example inspired Hutchinson.
“His mom said we beat the anger through our feet, by using the running as a way to get it out of our bodies,” Hutchinson said. “I really think I got over a lot of pain that way, changing my attitude from ‘It’s horrible that I had to survive cancer,’ to ‘I’m normal.’”
She also wants to raise awareness of a cancer that affects so many young adults.
“It’s really strange to be young and sick, because nobody knows what to do with that,” Hutchinson said. “You look healthy and you should be in the prime of your life. Culturally, it’s very hard for people to deal with it.”
When Hutchinson started marathon training, she asked Krings if he’d like to join her. Her new husband was supportive but definitely not interested in doing all that running himself. Yet Krings missed his wife while she was away on her long runs, so last year he offered to do the triathlon with her, Hutchinson’s next personal challenge.
“We got to spend the summer training together,” Krings said. “It was awesome.”
He was also impressed by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s work and was eager to join Team in Training again.
“The work they do is powerful and far-reaching, and I wanted to be a part of it,” he said.
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