By Joe Nuss

Adorned with her 2006 Boston Marathon finisher medal and draped in a shiny “space blanket” Karla Werner smiles for a picture with training partner Joey Anderson.  The snapshot, like crossing the finish line, is just a split second in time.  It doesn’t show the miles she ran or the time she spent training for this race.  It doesn’t show how Karla, like many runners, dealt internally with the challenges of long runs and long weeks of training to qualify for the historic race.  It doesn’t show her strength and it doesn’t show her courage.  Above all, it doesn’t show he she defied cancer to finish Boston only three weeks into a 27-week chemotherapy plan at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center in Chapel Hill.

Only four months earlier, a few weeks from her second Myrtle Beach Marathon, Karla discovered she had Stage III ductal breast cancer, an invasive form of cancer which in Karla’s case, meant that it had spread to her lymph nodes.  Despite her family history of breast cancer, she was shocked.  “I was running.  I was eating right. I was doing everything I thought I needed to do to be healthy,” she said.  “But, I didn’t let it get me down.  I was determined to beat it.”

With her doctor’s permission, Karla postponed her treatment for a few days so she could run the marathon at Myrtle Beach.  Four days after her finish, she had a lumpectomy and sentinel node biopsy at Rex Hospital, followed by a bone scan, MRI of her brain and a full body PET scan to determine whether or not the cancerous cells had already spread to other organs in her body.

Sleepless one night, in the dark and quiet of her bedroom, the woman determined to beat cancer, the woman who had the emotional strength to run a marathon knowing that cancer existed inside her breast and may possibly exist now in other parts of her body, intuitively knew her husband was also awake, reached out for his hand and revealed her fear with a simple statement. “I’m really scared,” she said.

Fortunately, tests revealed that Karla did not have Stage IV cancer, and following a mastectomy, she would begin chemotherapy under a UNC Lineberger cancer center clinical trial with the guidance of Dr. Lisa Carey.  Like a distance runner staring down the last 6 miles of a marathon with time running out to qualify for Boston, Karla’s emotional mix of a fear and determination formed her belief that she would not only win this race against cancer, but retain her identity as a runner.  Her next question was quite a surprise to Dr. Carey: “Can I still run Boston?”

Facing 27 weeks of chemotherapy and then an additional 33 radiation treatments over 5 more weeks and still wanting to run Boston, Karla’s determination was evident.  Dr. Carey agreed to support her as long as she handled chemotherapy well.  With a high level of fitness she developed from running (she ran over 1,400 miles the year before, not to mention 131 miles in January and 73 in February that year) Karla was able to withstand the treatment very well and make the trip to Boston.  Just over a month after her mastectomy and three weeks into chemotherapy, Karla and her training partner Joey Anderson finished the marathon hand-in-hand in just over 5:47 minutes, nearly two hours longer than it took them to qualify.

Eventually, Karla would finish her “cancer marathon” as well.  “I didn’t sign up for it,” says Karla, “but I knew I would run it and run it well.”  She has been cancer free since December 2006, but her quest for more traditional distance races and marathons continues.  Currently, she’s preparing for the Outer Banks Marathon in hopes of qualifying for Boston once more.  

In addition, Karla has a more personal race scheduled for 2010 – the Tar Heel 10-Miler, produced by Endurance Magazine.  WIth the start and finish on the UNC Campus, the Tar Heel 10-Miler’s new course will be just around the corner from the cancer center where Karla received her care.   Partnered with the UNC Greater Alumni Association, Endurance Magazine is also working to integrate the campus, faculty, students, and residents of the community into the event.  

“I have to run it.  After getting the care I received at UNC [Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center] and with distance running such a big part of who I am, this is a perfect match for me.  I can’t wait to run it in 2010.”