In competitions against the clock, some athletes display an
ability to seize control. Think of the Clark-Kent-to-Superman routines that
John Elway and Michael Jordan often pulled in the final seconds.
But Iram Leon stands on the sidelines of his own race against
time. Lodged in his brain is an untreatable and inoperable cancerous tumor that
statistics suggest will kill him before he is 40, eight years from now. Medical
science is advancing at a rate that doesn't preclude the development of a
treatment, but it's not clear if it will come in time.
"No one knows what technology will be available in five
years," said Allan Friedman, Duke University Hospital neurosurgeon in
chief, who in 2011 removed as much of Leon's brain tumor as possible.
The torment of enduring that wait can paste a cancer patient
to the couch, a surrender heavily associated with deadlier outcomes. Some seek
escape in their careers, but that is no longer an option for Leon, who early
this year was forced to step down as a juvenile probation officer in Travis
County, Texas, a position he had held for almost seven years. His thinking is
no longer clear, said Leon, adding, "I was making too many mistakes on the
stand."
But Leon can still run. Two years after his brain-cancer
diagnosis, he recently ran a sub-five-minute mile for the first time since high
school. What has startled the medical community even more is what Leon did this
month in Beaumont, Texas. He won the Gusher Marathon, finishing in 3:07:35.
That was one second slower than his personal record in the 26.2-mile event, set
days before he underwent brain surgery in early 2011.
But that lost second can't be blamed on his disease: During
the run, he was pushing his 6-year-old daughter, Kiana, in a stroller.
"She had a blast listening to Disney DIS -1.11% songs and getting food
from volunteers," said Leon, an Austin resident.
Leon's high-speed finish provides cancer survivors with an
athletic role model only weeks after the defrocking of Austin's more-famous
cancer-battling competitor, Lance Armstrong. After being stripped last autumn
of his seven Tour de France titles, Armstrong publicly admitted doping during
his cycling career.
That Leon is competing amid his battle for survival may make
his case all the more instructive to fellow cancer patients. Recent research
clearly shows that exercise improves outcomes for cancer patients. "Few
other leads have shown as much promise as physical activity in extending the
lives of cancer survivors," said an editorial last year in the Journal of
the National Cancer Institute.
In a nation where healthy people don't often exercise,
persuading the ill to do so is all the more difficult. Research shows that
there are lower exercise rates among cancer patients than among the general
population, a problem often exacerbated by oncologists who urge their patients
to take it easy. Never mind that the American Cancer Society and other medical
groups now encourage exercise among cancer patients—including encouraging
breast-cancer survivors to lift weights. "Among clinicians there continues
to be a reticence," said Kathryn Schmitz, a University of Pennsylvania
researcher on exercise in cancer patients.
"Mr. Leon gives us someone to point to when a person
fighting cancer says, 'I can't do it,'" says Dr. Schmitz. "Start
where you are. Walk laps around the dining room table. A cancer diagnosis
doesn't give you a get-out-of-jail-free card."
Leon was still in the hospital in late 2010 when—stunned by
news of his terminal diagnosis—he felt the need to run. "A friend came by
and ran with me around the hospital—against doctors' advice," recalled
Leon.
When the first neurosurgeon Leon consulted cautioned against
running, he sought out Friedman at Duke.
Friedman did more than give Leon the OK: After initially
recommending immediate surgery, Friedman agreed to put it off a couple of weeks
to accommodate a marathon for which Leon had logged months of training.
"Here's a young guy with a brain tumor who likes running, who's good at
it, so why not?" said Friedman, citing "defensive medicine" as
the main reason other physicians might say no.
Leon sensed another factor behind the neurosurgeon's
encouragement. "Friedman knew it might be my last marathon," said
Leon.
During that surgery, Friedman removed most of the tumor. The
remainder resides in sections of the brain beyond the reach of surgery. At the
moment the tumor isn't growing, said Friedman, but the majority of such tumors
prove fatal.
There is hope. In one case, Friedman removed from the spine
of the novelist Reynolds Price a tumor initially diagnosed as inoperable, but
that was eventually made reachable through new technology. Price chronicled the
story in one of the many books he wrote in a quarter century following that
experience. While waiting and hoping for the surgery that eventually saved him,
Friedman noted, "Reynolds wrote—he didn't let the cancer stop him."
In 2011, Price died at 77 from causes other than cancer.
While hoping for a similar fate, Leon runs. The anti-seizure
medication he takes sometimes causes him to vomit during runs. Once he blacked
out during a run, not knowing what had happened until he woke up in an
ambulance. Running alone is out of the question because he's easily
disoriented, a vulnerability that makes it difficult to lead the pack. At the
front of this month's marathon, he said he had to focus carefully on the
cyclist who was showing the way.
The payoff? "When I'm in a race, when I'm climbing a
hill, for a few moments it feels like I'm pulling ahead of my problems,"
he said.
Leon said he wants to set a new marathon personal record.
But he is only racing these days in events that will allow him to bring along
his daughter, Kiana, for whom a scholarship fund has been established at
www.donationto.com/Sports-Society-Fund-for-Iram-Leon.
"I want her to have as many memories of me as
possible," he said. "I want her to remember us having fun together,
not me being sick."
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