Betty Shock remembers that it was only a little more than five years ago when she would awaken several times in the middle of the night, sweat pouring from her skin and running down her long black hair, through her pajamas and onto the bed.
Her days weren’t much better. The then-35-year-old mother of two and wife of 18 years who once exercised as much as five times per week could feel pain in her joints with every step, as she was exhausted just walking up 15 steps in her Fallston home. She couldn’t laugh without bursting into a coughing fit.
“At first,” she said. “I just chalked it up to getting older.”
But when the pain in her chest hindered her breathing and forced her to sleep in a sitting position, she knew she was battling more than Father Time.
Oct. 24, 2003 — it’s a day Shock will never forget.
It’s the day she learned her problems stemmed from a tumor the size of grapefruit wrapped around her sternum.
It’s the day she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, one of the most curable forms of cancer that still kills about 1,300 annually, according to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
It’s also the day that made her re-evaluate her life.
“The first week, death crossed my mind, and if I went tomorrow, I lived a great life,” she said. “But then I realized Hodgkin’s is extremely curable and told myself that I was going to be there to watch my two kids get married.”
In November of that year, Shock began a five-year journey in which she persevered through painful radiation blasts that left third-degree burns on her chest, the loss of most of her hair, and chemotherapy that caused her luminous, olive skin to turn pale and her once fit body to become emaciated.
“It got to the point that drinking a glass of water felt like I was eating a box of needles,” she said. “That’s how much I hurt.”
Shock, now 40 and a regional vice president for GameStop, a national video game retailer, doesn’t mind discussing the past because it’s been a driving force that’s led her to the starting line for Saturday’s half-marathon. She’ll be one of about 20 members of the Harford County chapter of Team in Training, the world’s largest endurance program that trains runners for the purpose of raising money for cancer research, who’ll participate in the Under Armour Baltimore Running Festival.
“This is the celebration of turning 40 and being in five years of remission,” she said. “This race is a symbol of all of that.”
But Shock won’t be the only member of her family taking to the streets of Charm City. Chelsea, her 15-year-old daughter, will run the 5K, with 7-year-old son Mikey participating in the Kids Fun Run.
“What she’s done is a miracle,” said Chelsea, a sophomore at John Carroll. “The first thing I always tell people when they ask about my family is that my mom’s a cancer survivor.”
Meantime, husband Michael will be waiting at the finish line to give his wife a hug after her first half-marathon.
“We’re just thankful she’s still alive,” said Michael, whose fundraising campaign has generated more than $55,000 for leukemia research. “I look at it as my kids got a second chance with their mother, and I got a second chance with my wife. I just want to see her face when she crosses the finish line. I’ll be bawling my eyes out.”
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