It is our tendency as journalists to celebrate those who come in first.
But sometimes the one who comes in last has the best story.
And that was so in the Stars and Stripes Challenge, held last Sunday to raise money for cancer research and its victims.
Jana Morse was the last bicyclist to cross the finish line. She’s a 44-year-old internist who before Sunday had ridden no more than 45 miles at a time.
She took on the 100-mile challenge, a grueling ride from Gateway Park in Travelers Rest to Camp Spearhead to Campbell’s Covered Bridge to Dacusville and back to the park. Hills, mountains, flatland, the ultimate biking challenge.
Morse said she signed up simply because she wanted to help the cause. Her husband, Hywel, has been diagnosed with cancer twice, in December 2009 of leukemia and last October he unwent surgery – she calls it a seek and destroy mission – after a knot in his jaw was found to be malignant.
“I’ll do anything to raise money for cancer,” she said. “But when I signed up it was 70 degrees.”
Last Sunday it was in the 90s. She missed a rest stop at about 30 miles and by 50 she had severe cramping in her legs. She was becoming dehydrated but as a doctor knew the signs and knew just how far she could push herself. She’d been pedaling since 7:30 a.m. It was well past noon, and all the other racers had finished.
“We had heard this lady was out there,” said Kevin Dunn, the race organizer.
The sweeper vehicle, sent to pick up cones and make sure everyone is off the course, found her at about 90 miles. Inside the car was a medic and a coach. And the coach just happened to have his bike and gear.
USA Cycling coach John Williams rode with her the last 10 miles. He offered information about what the course ahead looked like and, perhaps most important encouragement.
When they rolled across the finish line at about 4 p.m., the dozen or so race volunteers still there, all cried.
“I had to walk away,” Dunn said. Three girls gave her roses. Her husband and their son, Timmy, were there.
By then, all the folks waiting for Morse had heard her story.
It’s not only the uncertainty and fear that cancer brings, but also that the couple has lost two children to a rare genetic malady called Vici syndrome. This syndrome is so rare the Morse children were the seventh and eighth children in the world to be diagnosed with it. Most patients live no more than a year, some as long as three.
Tomas, the eldest, and Carys, the youngest, were never able to walk or talk. Some days they suffered hundreds of seizures. Eventually they could not swallow. They had heart problems.
The syndrome is a lifetime of hospitals and dashed dreams. Timmy does not have the syndrome.
“Our vacation home was Greenville Hospital System,” Morse said.
Tomos defied the odds and lived for eight and a half years.
“We’re stubborn,” Morse said. During the ice storm of 2006, the Morses lost power and moved in with her brother. When they returned home, they got Tomos out of the car and he was dead.
Carys, with the same platinum blond hair and porcelain skin as her brother and other Vici syndrome patients, died in her sleep last October, two weeks after her father’s cancer surgery. Hywel had quit work as a chemical engineer to stay home with her. He nursed her even as he went through chemotherapy, which put the leukemia in remission.
And that – all those life challenges – was what she was riding for last Sunday.
“A lot of people are dealing with stuff like this and they want to hide from it,” Dunn said. “She didn’t want to hide. She was a zest for life.”
“Remission is not a cure,” she said. “I’m not going to lose anyone else.”
Tags: bicycling, greenville, Lyn Riddle
