For the first time in 22 years, Chris Caverly won’t be around for the finish of Saturday’s Relay for Life at Coquitlam’s Percy Perry Stadium.
He’s leaving halfway through the 12-hour marathon event to attend the high school graduation of his son, Rhys. That he’s able to do that at all may be because of the money raised by the relay to benefit the Canadian Cancer Society.
Caverly is a cancer survivor twice over.
His first diagnosis with the disease led to his first participation in the run. His second diagnosis, as well as the loss of family members and friends over the years, steeled his resolve to keep running.
Caverly was a fit, active 31-year-old father of an infant daughter when he was told he had six months to live because cancer was in his stomach and had spread to his lymph nodes.
Caverly decided he had nothing to lose and everything to live for. Doctors removed 80% of his stomach and put him on a eight-week regime of chemotherapy.
“I had a young family I had to support,” Caverly said.
It was as his wife was driving him to the cancer clinic for one of his chemo treatments he saw a sign along the road for the relay. She told him he should do it, and a week after his last round of drugs, he did.
“Physically, it was tough,” said Caverly, who’d dropped 60 of his 180 pounds during treatment. “For me it was a point to prove that I’d beat the disease.”
As he circled the track and then mingled with other survivors and families while his teammates continued, Caverly gained an appreciation that cancer was much larger than his own encounter.
“It was an eye-opener,” he said. “I was just concentrating on myself, but there’s all these other people going through loss.”
Caverly’s Crusaders of 12 runners doing one-hour stints on the track became an annual effort, then expanded to Caverly/Kot’s Crusaders when a good friend, Tony Kot, succumbed to the disease. Over the years they’ve contributed to the more than $500 million raised by similar relays across Canada to help fund research into cancer causes and cures as well as support services for patients and their families.
Then, four years ago, cancer came back, this time in Caverly’s kidney. It seemed he’d never be free of the shadow cast over his life by the disease, which had also claimed his mother and father and had alighted in his sister’s breast.
Luckily the tumour hadn’t spread so doctors cut it out and no further treatment was required.
But the fear and uncertainty were all-consuming. Caverly said the relay and the connections he’d made there through the years became a lifeline to positivity.
“It gives people hope, that’s what the relay provides,” Caverly said. “Doctors can tell you one thing, but the power of the mind can be very important.”
As can the desire to see his son graduate high school.
• Relay for Life Tri-Cities begins at 10 a.m. Saturday and runs until 10 p.m. at Percy Perry Stadium (1290 Pipeline Rd.) For more information to register as a participant or to support a runner, follow the link at www.relayforlife.ca
