CLEVELAND — Cathy DeCoske has always enjoyed riding her bike, but she’s gotten into the sport much more recently.
“Been slowly working up to do like 12 miles each ride,” DeCoske said.
Since May, she’s been training for VeloSano, Cleveland Clinic’s annual Bike to Cure event. All the fundraising efforts benefit cancer research and prevention.
DeCoske is taking part in the 25 mile ride, and it’s her first time taking part.
Just like many other riders, this event is personal for her.
She was diagnosed 20 years ago with triple negative breast cancer when she was 36 weeks pregnant.
“I wanted to shut down and just have my baby and wait until my baby was born and then take care of me,” DeCoske said.
DeCoske was worried about what would happen to her son if she underwent chemotherapy before he was born.
“Save my child from chemotherapy in the womb and lose a breast,” she said. “I didn’t care. I’d lose my left arm for my child.”
Her husband said it was too dangerous to wait. He encouraged her to fight back against the cancer right away so that she could be around to raise their son. Alongside her medical team, they came up with a plan.
“Have a mastectomy while I was pregnant, two weeks after that induce labor, and then two weeks after that start chemo,” she said.
Her son, Adam, was born healthy. DeCoske calls him a joy.
“The best thing in the world,” she said. “It was the best of times and the worst of times, but he made it all good.”
While cruising around her neighborhood now, DeCoske reflected on how much her family has overcome in the last two decades. She was never able to have another child and had a miscarriage when Adam was five.
But she’s had no recurrence of cancer and she’s so proud of the young man her son is turning out to be.
“He’s in college doing Air Force ROTC,” DeCoske said. “To see him achieve and start on his own is very important to me and my husband because I didn’t know if I would be here.”
Supporting cancer research is vital to DeCoske. She studied everything she could to understand what was happening to her body, and how cancer and chemo could affect her child long term. She recalled not much information being available during her journey and her desire to change that and help others is her reason to ride.
“I ride for myself,” she said. “For other women, other people, all people that have been affected by cancer that research can help fund and maybe find a cure. That’s the whole thing about research. I don’t just want better outcomes. I want a cure so that nobody has to go through these things again.”
On Friday, Sept. 9 from 4 to 9 p.m. a VeloSano kickoff party meant to celebrate cancer patients, survivors and riders with food and music will be held.
Dr. Nima Sharifi is one of the cancer researchers who has been part of VeloSano since it started. He is primarily working on ways to treat prostate cancer that is resistant to standard therapies, but he explained VeloSano funds research projects for all kinds of cancer. He said a lot of the work happening inside the labs at the Cleveland Clinic would not be possible without this fundraiser.
“Generally speaking, it’s very difficult to get support to fund cancer research,” he said. “There’s not a lot of support from other grant agencies for it. So the kind of support that comes from VeloSano allows investigators to take risks. And oftentimes you have to take risks to get huge rewards and huge hits,right? It’s like swinging for that Grand Slam. You really want to swing for the big hits. Because if you get that, then that really allows you to make major advances for cancer and that’s really what we want. That’s what all of us want.”
Starting Saturday, Sept. 10 at 7 a.m., participants will ride anywhere from six to 100 miles to support the cause.
