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22-month-old celebrates cancer victory
Gallery
22-month-old celebrates cancer victory
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
1“She had a Wilms tumor,” Michelle said. “When she was 9 months old, they took out her right kidney.”
Wilms is kidney cancer in children.
Gianna, dressed in her tiny survivors’ purple T-shirt, frolicked and ran about Friday like any other toddler. Since the surgery, followed by chemotherapy sessions, Gianna has been doing well, clear of cancer, her mother said.
The tot goes monthly to Akron Children’s Hospital, Boardman, to have her blood checked and gets a chest X-ray every three months.
This marks the second year for the Relay in Poland.
“Two years ago almost to the day, I was standing at the entrance to Baird-Mitchell Field with some community leaders and I said, ‘Why don’t we have a Relay in Poland?’” said John Whitinger, the event’s volunteer chairman.
He didn’t get an answer but was told that if he wanted to get one started, those leaders would support him.
A two-time cancer survivor himself, Whitinger got to work.
Last year’s event raised about $12,000 and organizers set $25,000 for this year’s goal.
“This is the 25th anniversary of the Relay for Life, so they set a goal [in Poland] for 25 teams and to raise $25,000,” said Bridgett Savage, the ACS staff representative for the event. “We’re going to do it.”
The amount raised was still being totaled Friday evening, but organizers exceeded the team goal with 26 teams participating.
Members of one of those teams, Team Bonkers, wore gray T-shirts, with “In loving memory” of Joe and Lulu on the back. Team members include friends and family of Joe Young, who died in February of esophageal cancer, and Jenny Lou “Lulu” Mussler, who died in June 2008 of lymphoma.
Annabelle Miller of Boardman, Mussler’s mother, was walking in her first relay “on account of my daughter,” she said.
Whitinger, who has a brain tumor, first started walking in relays about four years ago in the Boardman gathering. He’s doing well now but goes to the doctor every three months for an MRI.
He say his wife, Jennifer, and son, Aaron, are his reasons for walking in the relay.
“My wife is my rock and my son is my inspiration,” Whitinger said.
Nelson and Caroline Gustafson of Poland, both colon cancer survivors, walked in the first Poland Relay last year and returned this year.
But they’ve been involved in Relays for many years. Caroline’s niece, Sarah Geltemeyer, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma at 7, served as grand marshal of the event in Naples, Fla.
“She had 10 years of good health,” Caroline said of her niece.
The disease returned, though, and Sarah died in May at 17. The girl’s mother, Julie Terihay, is a Poland native.
Friday’s festivities also included crowning of a king and queen.
The queen is Barbara Whitehouse, whose husband died of cancer. Mitch Dinopoulos, a Poland Seminary High School student, is king. Mitch was diagnosed last year with brain cancer.
A team of his friends and classmates, in their “Stay Strong 31” shirts, filled the track. The 31 refers to Mitch’s number on the school’s basketball team.
denise_dick@vindy.com