Kari Knox
As told by mom, Kim Knox:
We faced a lot of challenges throughout Kari's cancer journey. When she was diagnosed we had to leave our 6 month old boy at home in PEI while we moved to Halifax at the IWK for 2 months and 2 days. Carrie faced a lot of second hand complications from her cancer, so we had to stay in the hospital a lot longer than expected. Not only was watching your little girl go through something so terrible difficult, but money was also tight at the time for travel and treatment.
Dealing with a cancer diagnosis has made us have more compassion and understanding with others who are going through cancer or other health issues. It also moves us to give back to those who helped us along the way. We are forever grateful to the IWK and the caring doctors and nurses. We give back by having an annual horse pulling competition in our community.
Carrie always loved to run, and I think that she started Team In Training as she thought it would be a good way to train, and contribute to the blood cancer community.
However, by the end of the experience I think it became really therapeutic for her, she became very close to the other members and knew from that point on how much support she really had. At first Carrie was almost embarrassed to share her story, not many of her friends knew what she had gone through, and I really think that TNT and LTN helped build her confidence. When she shared her story, I felt really proud of her and knew that this was such a huge milestone for her.
I think Canadians should support the blood cancer community through TNT or LTN because not only are funds raised for cutting edge research in hopes to find better treatments and a potential cure, but it also provides support for everyone that is affected by a blood cancer.
It is hard to summarize our experience as a whole in a single word, but if I had to choose, I guess it would be "overwhelming". we had so much information all at once and things moved very quickly from diagnosis on PEI to arriving at the IWK in Halifax.
