Meeting Brian and Margaret Benson doesn’t evoke words like sickness or disease.
The Bensons are a warm and lively couple who speak animatedly and laugh easily. Brian is an avid bike rider and Margaret teaches Zumba. The couple lives in Vancouver and disappears to their cabin in 108 Mile Ranch whenever they get the chance.
One wouldn’t suspect Brian has twice been diagnosed with cancer and Margaret is living with Cystic Fibrosis.
Margaret has undergone a double lung transplant and is now in kidney failure while Brian is undergoing chemotherapy.
“For the most part I’ve done quite well,” said Brian, who just completed the Ride to Conquer Cancer for the fourth time on Sunday, Aug. 26.
When Brian rode the same route in 2016, his legs cramped so badly he said he was “incapacitated” on the side of the road, 80 km into a 160 km ride.
He refused the support vehicle, put his bike into the lowest gear and kept going.
“I was determined. I was angry at cancer,” he said.
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Rewind to 2013, Brian’s cancer journey began when he was biking up a steep hill in February and he said something felt wrong.
A self-exam revealed a lump in one of his testicles that ultimately had to be removed. Doctors closely monitored him for the following four-and-a-half years.
“I was devastated. I think the first time anyone gets cancer and hears the C-word you think it’s a death sentence and it was very emotional for me, very emotional.”
Years later, on another long bike ride, the outside of Brian’s left foot went numb.
He said he didn’t think anything of it, initially, and figured the feeling would come back when he took his shoes off.
Instead, the numbness spread through both feet and became painful.
“I couldn’t sleep, just grimacing in pain. The sharpest pain you could imagine.”
Another bout of testing through more specialists resulted in a second and much rarer cancer diagnosis: Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia.
It is an overdevelopment of the immunoglobulin M (or IgM) protein, said Brian, which results in thick blood that doesn’t flow well to extremities with small vessels, like the feet.
This particular type of blood cancer affects about three people in a million, he said his doctor told him.
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When he was told he’d be starting chemotherapy, Brian was excited.
“Sounds crazy, but let’s fix this. Let’s get this right.”
Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia is currently incurable, he said, but it is treatable.
Brian completed six months of chemotherapy and is now on a “maintenance chemotherapy program” where he receives one drug, instead of two, every three months.
He’s asked his doctors if he is in remission, but he said they don’t use that word in his case. Instead, doctors have told him, “Let’s just say it’s in a smouldering or a sleeping mode right now.”
He only just started researching his cancer about a month ago, because he said he wanted to avoid the “self-fulfilling prophecy” of expecting symptoms.
Fatigue, for instance, is a well-known symptom. But Brian said, “I listen to my body. When I’m tired I’ll have a nap.”
He doesn’t call himself a cancer survivor. After all, he is still living with cancer. He prefers the term “cancer thriver.”
When asked how he’s been able to thrive with cancer, he said, “You can take two choices: go bury yourself under a shell or get on with life.”
Brian carries photos of people who have their own cancer struggles and victories with him when he does the Ride to Conquer Cancer.
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Among those photos was a clipping of the Free Press’ article about Ed Young, the well-loved and community-minded man from 100 Mile House who is currently undergoing treatment for rectal cancer.
“That was important to me, you know, to do that for people that can’t. It provides me incentive, too, you know, to just keep going.”
His wife has also helped keep Brian going, leading by example by maintaining her positivity and sense of humour throughout Cystic Fibrosis, diabetes, a double lung transplant and a serious, post-surgery stroke and seizure.
“So you know I’m not getting a lot of sympathy from her,” he laughed.
Margaret was diagnosed with CF when she was 14 and told her life expectancy was 15. She is now 59-years-old.
Among the amazing things she has accomplished, Margaret was a teacher for 35 years.
She said people told her for wanting to go into a classroom with lung disease.
After receiving her double lung transplant on the final day of November, in 1999, she had a major stroke and a two-minute full-body seizure.
She said she was told she would likely always struggle to walk or talk.
“But I remember thinking, ‘No, I’m walking out of here and I’m not walking in a wheelchair … I am going to run again one day’.”
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Margaret has now competed in five different sports in the Transplant Games and has travelled the world. She broke the world record in her age category for the racewalk on the tenth anniversary of her transplant and still holds that record to this day.
She said her mantra, and what she always aimed to teach her students, is to “believe in your dreams and your goals, but mostly, believe in yourself.”
Her latest blood test showed that her kidney function is down to 15 per cent because of the harsh medication she has had to take most of her life.
Even during kidney failure, Margaret is a firecracker of energy and teaches Zumba in her spare time.
“I always say to people, ‘What are you going to do, stop the world and jump off?’ You can’t. You’ve just got to keep going and you’ve got to believe that it’s going to work out.”
beth.audet@100milefreepress.net
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