- May 5, 2024
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Relay for Life Flagler threw its annual launch party in preparation for the 2013 Relay for Life in May.
Relay for Life is a fundraising community walk in which participants form teams and walk for 18 hours overnight, with pledgers supporting their efforts. Money raised supports cancer-fighting efforts.
Jo Ann Nahirny, a cancer fighter and English teacher at Matanzas High School, spoke about what Relay for Life means to her.
“Anyone can get cancer,” she said at the launch party. “Cancer doesn’t care how old you are. It can strike anyone at any time.”
Nahirny first learned she had cancer in November 2005. She was 43.
“Cancer is insidious,” she said. “It sneaks up on you, and before treatment starts, in many cases, you don’t even feel sick. It can indeed be a silent killer.”
Nahirny had a tumor in her lower abdomen. She had surgery to remove it in January 2006. It took more than eight hours for her doctor to remove the eight-pound tumor.
He also removed her left kidney, which had become too strangled by the tumor to function. Had the surgery been delayed much longer, the tumor would have crushed her kidney, causing it to fail.
“I would have died,” she said simply.
After the surgery, she thought she was cured.
“I knew after that surgery that my life had been handed back to me,” Nahirny said. “I was spared for reasons I don’t know. That’s why I work so hard and do so much and make every minute count. I don’t waste time, because to this day, I don’t know how much longer I will be a cancer survivor.”
On June 25, Nahirny learned that her cancer had returned.
Since then, she’s undergone 42 radiation treatments. She’s had to take a leave of absence from teaching, and her husband, who also works at Matanzas, had to do the same so she could have a caretaker.
On Nov. 13, she will have another surgery to remove the new tumor.
The success rate for her procedure is 50%. But she tries not to let that get to her.
“Cancer survivors are living proof that we can’t always choose what happens to us, however much we think we are in control,” Nahirny said. “But we can control how we respond to what’s happened to us.”
Nahirny knows how widespread the disease is — one out of six Americans will be diagnosed with it. She’s seen it in three of her immediate family members and in members of her extended family.
And that’s why Relay for Life is important, she said. It works to stop so many people from being affected by such a devastating disease.
Flagler County's 2013 Relay for Life will be held May 11 at Central Park at Town Center. Teams can sign up and get more information about the event at www.relayforlife.org.
