By Khalida Sarwari
On a warm July morning, members of Margot’s Semicolons gathered on the track at Campbell Community Center, just as they had done every summer for the past seven years.
Clad in matching purple shirts, the members–including six cancer survivors and their family and friends–began gearing up for the 24-hour Relay for Life event to raise awareness about the disease.
The team is named after Margot Provost, a 46-year-old mother of two from Campbell who was diagnosed with colon cancer six years ago. But after years of surgeries and chemotherapy she is now living a cancer-free life.
“After I had my surgery, they removed part of my colon and I joked I had half of a colon,” Provost said. “It became the team name and it’s been that name for seven years.”
Though the team’s name remained the same, Provost realized there was something different about this particular year; she felt more like a participant than a survivor. Surrounded by her 86-year-old mother and her sister–both of whom are also cancer survivors–and her husband, son and daughter, Provost went on to walk 11 miles at the relay fundraiser and came in first among 856 participants as the top adult fundraiser.
It is a sweet victory for a woman who has not only had to fight her own battle with the disease, but who did it while witnessing her father succumb to bladder cancer and leukemia at the age of 75.
The year was 2007, and a series of surgeries left Provost too weak to spend time with her father or be a source of solace for the rest of her family. For the first time, she went from being the caregiver to being dependent upon others for help getting to the hospital and preparing meals for her young children.
Provost’s 18-year-old son Ryan was 11 at the time and recalled how quickly his own life changed as a result of his mother’s illness.
“It was kind of a dramatic change,” he said. “She used to be super involved in all my schoolwork. I was more on my own really quickly, and that helped me mature a little quicker.”
One of the hardest parts of fighting cancer, Provost said, was seeing her family suffer with her.
“It’s been a rocky road, especially for my husband and my kids,” she said. “They’ve kind of been through a rollercoaster ride.”
The signs appeared in late 2005, shortly after Provost turned 40. For a while she ignored the discomfort and pain she was experiencing, thinking it was due to a food allergy. On Jan. 5, 2006, her doctor gave her the unexpected news that she had stage 3 colon cancer.
The diagnosis had confirmed Provost’s worst fear.
“I was trying to tell myself everything was going to be fine, but in the back of my head I knew it wasn’t,” she said.
Her husband, Jeff, an electrical engineer, sat next to her. It was as if they had both gotten hit by a truck. Life stopped for a moment and Provost’s head began spinning with thoughts about chemotherapy.
Fifteen days later, she underwent the first of a series of surgeries to remove the part of her colon that contained the tumor. She remained hopeful about avoiding chemotherapy, but the tumor had broken through her colon and reached her lymph nodes. In February she began the first round of chemotherapy.
Eight months later, Provost had a recurrence. The cancer had metastasized to other parts of her body. This meant more surgeries and another round of chemo. At one point, Provost stayed in the hospital for 6½ weeks.
“This was probably one of the more stressful times for my family,” she said. “No one really knew when I was coming home. I was pretty sick.”
Finally, in September of that year, she was well enough to go home, but two months later began another round of chemo, and before the year was through Provost had to say goodbye to her ailing father.
Then in February 2008, Provost hit a wall. Her sickness as a result of doing two different chemotherapy treatments became unbearable to the point that she called her oncologist and said she needed a break. It was decided that she could drop one of the treatments and continue with the one that had the fewer side effects.
That year, Provost battled weight and hair loss, severe nausea, dehydration and numbness in her feet and hands due to neuropathy.
It’s been a long climb back to health, but life is starting to settle back to normal now for Provost.
“This is my new normal,” she said. “It’s like living with a chronic disease. You just learn to live and manage it.”
These days Provost keeps busy by making and crossing off goals on her bucket list. Some are adventurous–after recovering from one of her surgeries, she and her family took a helicopter ride from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon for lunch–but others are much simpler.
“I couldn’t have anything cold during my treatment,” she said. “When we took a trip to San Diego, my big thing was to get ice cream.”
No matter how big or small the adventure, for Provost the most important thing is making lasting memories with her daughter and son. She lives by the quote, “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away,” and she brings a camera with her everywhere she goes.
“I thought, OK, we need to make moments that take our breath away,” she said.
Relay forLife results
Campbell’s annual Relay for Life raised more than $190,000 on July 7 and 8. The event brought together teams from local businesses, schools, churches and families who camped out and took turns walking around the track at the Campbell Community Center.The aim of the 24-hour program is to spread cancer awareness, celebrate the lives of survivors and remember those who lost their lives to the disease.
Fundraising will continue until August.
Margot’s Semicolons make their point in Campbell Relay for Life
