Race changed everything for Jacey

SANDPOINT - Maybe it's fate, or destiny, if you prefer - the power or agency that supposedly predetermines and orders the course of events.

Actor Tom Hanks, as his character Forrest Gump, put it this way: "I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floatin' around accidental-like on a breeze ... but I think maybe it's both."

Jacelyn Lawson was 4 and a half years old when doctors discovered she had a Wilms tumor, a cancerous growth that starts in the kidneys. It was metastatic, stage IV - it had spread throughout her little body. Doctors also found lumps in her lungs. Another in her abdomen was the size of a grapefruit.

"Jacey was really sick," her mother, Nancy Jenkins said. "Her prognosis was poor."

An illness is different when you're 4, however. Even though her mom told her she was sick, and would go through a lot before she got better, the fact didn't hit home until Jacelyn, her preferred name today, found herself in the hospital. Her first intravenous injection woke her up.

"I'm going to be here awhile," she recalled thinking. "This isn't just going to go away."

Her doctors, Jacelyn said, were excellent - inspiring even, as we will learn - and made her feel like she was just a kid with a cold rather than a life-threatening illness. They called the needle that fed the chemotherapy into her little body a butterfly, but she called it a hummingbird.

"That was a way to make it seem not so scary," she said.

In addition to chemotherapy and radiation treatments, doctors had to surgically remove the masses in her lungs and stomach. They also removed her infected kidney.

The treatment was grueling for both patient and parents, but for different reasons. In addition to Jacelyn's treatment, Jenkins' marriage disintegrated, collateral damage of the disease growing inside their daughter.

Cancer comes in more than 100 different forms, and is mainly an adult disease. A majority of cancers are lifestyle and environment-related - things like smoking and diet increase the risk of contracting the disease. Screening and early detection save lives, according to the Cancer Data Registry of Idaho.

Between 2008 and 2012, 1,309 Bonner County residents were diagnosed with some form of cancer. Between 2009 and 2013, 500 people - one quarter of all deaths - were due to cancer, according to the CDRI.

And Bonner County has a higher rate of cancer than that of Idaho overall. Kids are part of that statistic.

Between 2008 and 2012, seven Bonner County boys and three girls were diagnosed with some form of cancer, according to the CDRI.

And that's just cancer. There are countless other diseases that can infect children and affect their families.

There finally came a time when Jenkins nearly gave up. What saved her spirit was a community fundraiser and support event called Jacey's Race.

Jenkins had been dealing with her daughter's illness "for a long time," when, in 2001, the day of Jacey's Race arrived. By then she had began questioning the path forward in Jacelyn's treatment.

"We felt like, 'do we want to keep doing this?'" she said.

Jenkins noted that parents of severely ill kids get to a point where they ask themselves if they should continue with treatment, make their child sick - again. Hurt more.

The race changed everything.

"We showed up that day and we were just surrounded by this energy," said Jenkins, who even today gets emotional recalling the event 14 years ago. "Kids didn't care that she looked horrible. People we didn't even know were there. And just that energy, that pouring of love, it gave us hope."

That community energy reenergized her resolve and made her feel like they could win, get through the final stretch. It made her feel like everything was going to be OK.

"We just have to carry on," Jenkins recalled thinking, and so they did. "Even Jacey had a different energy."

Jenkins is hard pressed to describe the energy, except that it was a turning point for the family.

And it's that energy, not the money, Jenkins said, that is the underlying purpose for Jacey's Race, now in its eighth year.

"We want to give that to other families," she said.

As for Jacelyn Lawson, after seven months of surgeries and treatment, and a boost of community energy, she survived her childhood ordeal. Now in her 13th year of remission, she suffers few after-effects of her treatment - an occasional sore back, she said, that sometimes bothers her when she runs. Otherwise, she's rarely sick.

The family moved to Sandpoint in 2005, and reignited Jacey's Race in their new home, to spread the energy, so to speak.

Today, Lawson is much more than the epitome of a survivor. A graduate of Sandpoint High School, where she ran cross country, she is now an articulate, soft-spoken pre-med student. Last year, she matriculated at the American University in Paris, where her high school Spanish didn't help her communicate much, she said.

She is currently enrolled in the University of Southern California, Keck Medical School, Global Health Program.

And Lawson's preferred field of medicine? Nephrology: The diagnosis and treatment of kidney diseases.

So for Lawson, the fickle feather of fate has brought her nearly full circle. The disease that gained its hold in, and eventually took one of her kidneys, is now the focus of her education and career goals.

And it just sort of happened that way: one part inspiration and one part exploration that involved people and events she may never have experienced if not for the cancer that nearly took her life.

Lawson credits much of her interest in nephrology to her childhood oncologist, Colorado Dr. Lorrie Odom.

"Lorrie was the first person to be reassuring," Lawson said of Odom, whose positive spirit stood out in contrast to other medical staff during her treatment. "She always made the kids know what was going on."

Patient and physician have stayed in touch through the years. When she was 8 years old, Lawson decided she wanted to explore the illness she had overcome.

"I didn't like people asking me about it, and not knowing about it," she said.

She emailed Odom and asked what she had gone through. Odom was open about the diseases and treatment.

Lawson has always been aiming for the medical field. Growing up, she said, her goal was pediatric oncology - a cancer doctor for kids, "because that's what Lorrie Odom did, and I wanted to do what she did."

But her namesake race and high school courses exposed her to other diseases and disorders. She became more interested in children's medicine in general. Then her interest shifted to endocrinology, a branch of medicine that deals with the body's organs - kidneys - and diseases like diabetes.

That exploration eventually led her to nephrology.

In the end, the cancer that nearly killed her has given Lawson, now 19, something that many people never find in their life: Purpose.

"Even though at the time I may not have understood it, it made me understand everything else in life," she said of the cancer.

Read more of this story at cdapress.com.

Not unlike combat veterans, Lawson and other survivors, regardless of disease, share a special connection that other people cannot completely understand.

"I can relate to them," she said of that connection. "I went through something like that."

Her experiences have infused Lawson with a certain empathetic wisdom that others can sense. Children battling diseases are drawn to her, her mother said.

"For me, going through cancer, I know what that's like. I know what it does to a family. If I can find meaning in another person's life, and make their transition easier, I think that's kind of made me want to do it," she said of her career path.

Empathy. Energy. Community support. Fate.

"I'd like people to understand why we do this," Jenkins said. "It's really not about the race, it's about the kids that we're helping."

Only destiny can say what those kids who have, and might benefit from the community energy and support that is Jacey's Race might go on to accomplish. But one person might have a pretty good idea.

Just ask Jacelyn.

Jacey's Race - come feel the energy

• Who: Anyone. Individuals, friends, work teams in a variety of age groups.

• What and when: Sunday July 12

• On-site registration, 7-8 a.m.

• Expo and silent auction, 7:30-10:30 a.m.

• 5K run/walk, 8:30 a.m.

• 1K run/walk, 9:15 a.m.

• 5K awards, 9:45 a.m.

• S.T.E.P performance, 10 a.m.

• Where: Sandpoint High School, 410 Division St.

For more information go to www.jaceys-race.com.