Coquitlam's Kevin Cameron didn't have to scrounge for teammates to join him on a charity bike ride for cancer research - the disease that strikes two in five Canadians has a twisted way of uniting people.
"It's kind of interesting when bad things happen, we meet people who are like-minded," says Cameron, 49, a stage four cancer survivor. "We understand that we are not alone in these struggles."
THE DIAGNOSIS
Cancer wasn't on Cameron's radar three years ago. The then 250-pound hobbyist weightlifter was the picture of health, or so he thought.
"I had a persistent cough," recalls Cameron. "In typical male fashion, I shrugged it off - until the pain started."
Meanwhile, cancer was metastasizing in the lymph nodes below the surface of his "thick neck." One particularly determined tumour had wrapped itself around a main nerve in Cameron's neck.
"Sitting in the [doctor's] office, the last words I expected to hear were 'You have cancer,'" says Cameron, who remembers turning around to see if the doctor was talking to someone else.
Surgery wasn't an option as it would have required hollowing out large sections of his neck and jaw. Instead, he says his doctor told him, "'We are going to hit you with the most toxic form of chemo.'"
"I had to have a feeding tube surgically installed in order to gain any nutrition as my neck and throat were too badly burned to eat or swallow. I have no saliva glands anymore as they were destroyed by the radiation, and the challenges with my dental program are very complicated from radiation damage as well. The lack of saliva makes the long-distance bike riding a little more difficult but I just have to drink more water than most.
"I can't really describe what it's like," he says of the effects of the treatment. "I basically say, 'I threw up for nine months.'"
He puts the experience another way, saying otherwise healthy people who are fatigued might collapse on the couch but, for him, it was like he was sinking into the floorboards.
There was also a drastic change in appearance for him to contend with: a 112 lb. weight loss.
Languishing on the couch, feeling the effects of the chemotherapy killing his cancer, Cameron glimpsed an advertisement on TV for the Ride to Conquer Cancer.
At the time, he couldn't even climb the stairs but he told his wife, "I'm going to do that" and "that goal helped me get off my butt and start my healing."
THE RIDE
Cameron didn't have the dexterity to ride a bike around the block, let alone 100 km in a single outing before he got sick.
"I was so big and bulky, and didn't have much flexibility," he explains.
He laughs, recalling his performance in last year's 200-km, two-day Ride to Conquer Cancer - a major feat for a man who was celebrating his first year of being cancer free.
"It hurt a lot - 16 Advils got me through those two days," he says.
This year, Cameron is back at it again, training and fundraising for the June 15 and 16 mass bike ride from Vancouver to Seattle.
Over the past two years, he has collected teammates at random - all of them connected by cancer.
"The rules have changed, you don't have to be a heavy drinker or smoker [to get cancer]," says Cameron. "It's attacking everyone. I had no risk factors."
Cameron met one female rider while she was climbing a big hill and learned her aunt and uncle were in treatment for cancer together.
His brother Brad is the obligatory family member on the team.
"[Kevin's diagnosis] was tough for the whole family," recalls Brad Cameron. "When we found out it was a 50-50 chance of survival for him, it was too much."
And it was fellow teammate Susan Fiedler's well-documented feistiness in her battle with non-Hodgkin lymphoma that struck a chord with Cameron. Perhaps it was the unapologetic way the jewelry designer emblazoned an epithet on a delicate silver bracelet to express how she was feeling: "F Cancer."
Fiedler sells the bracelets as part of her F Cancer Embrace Life initiative (www.fcancerembracelife.com), which has raised more than $150,000 for InspireHealth, a cancer care centre in Vancouver and Victoria.
"I came across her website and saw what she was doing," says Cameron of how Fiedler came to be on his cycling team. "I connected with Susan's message."
So much so that Cameron had the words from the bracelet permanently tattooed on the arm that his chemo drip went into.
Now, the Motley Crew - that's Cameron's Ride to Conquer Cancer team name - meets every week in a quiet residential area behind Fremont Village shopping complex in Port Coquitlam. From there, the group always ends up cycling over the Golden Ears Bridge into Langley because the roads are easy to negotiate.
Next week, when the Ride to Conquer Cancer cyclists depart, the Motley Crew will have raised close to $30,000 for cancer research in B.C.
For more information or to donate on behalf of Cameron's team visit the Ride to Conquer Cancer's website, va13.conquercancer.ca.
