October 25, 2007
Lowney survives cancer to become athlete, CFD donor
Name: Susan Lowney
UW Job: Buyer II, in the Purchasing Department.
Relationship to Combined Fund Drive: Coordinator, donor — and a cancer survivor who has benefited greatly from training with Team Survivor Northwest. Since having cancer, she said, she has walked in three half-marathons, two marathons and the Danskin all-woman triathlons in 2005 and 2006.
Organization’s mission: “To support women in their cancer recovery through empowering programs of physical activity and health education.”
Team Survivor Northwest provides cancer recovery through fitness and provides its services free to any woman, at any fitness level and at any stage of cancer treatment and recovery. The agency currently offers 18 different fitness activities a week in 17 different locations. Lowney noted that though the CFD book lists administrative costs of Team Survivor Northwest as 36 percent, “most of that money goes to the instructors for the many programs.” She said it is a “small, lean organization with a very small staff.” For more information, visit online at http://teamsurvivornw.org/.
A survivor’s story: “Before cancer surgery, I was a couch potato,” Lowney said. “Cancer is a wake-up call.”
Lowney said her kidney cancer was found during a routine scan of her gall bladder, in 2000. She had surgery to remove the kidney but did not have to have radiation or chemotherapy. She said she feels blessed by this but it also leaves her with “a kind of survivor’s guilt” because so many other cancer patients have to endure both along their way to recovery. She said she feels fortunate, too, that the disease was noticed early. “Most kidney cancer is found way too late,” she said. “But in this day and age of tests, more and more are finding their cancers early in the process.”
She said she went to a health fair a few weeks after her surgery, which was in May 2000, and stopped at a table being staffed by a representative of Team Survivor Northwest, who encouraged her to participate.
“I could not do three minutes on a recumbent bike, and now here I am a triathlete — which blows my mind when I think about it,” she said about her participation in the Danskin Triathlon in 2005.
Lowney said she views her work as a coordinator for the Combined Fund Drive as a good way of giving back to those who have helped her.
And she said she still participates in a weekly walking group sponsored by Team Survivor Northwest.
