How to beat cancer and find yourself again: the personal experience of a world-class athlete

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Triathlete Maria Shorets - about trying to come to terms with the diagnosis, three courses of chemotherapy and a new birthday.

This article is part of the One-on-One Project. In it we talk about relationships with ourselves and others. If the topic is close to you, share your story or opinion in the comments. Will wait!

Sometimes life throws up such tests that I want to seriously ask: "Is this some kind of joke?" For example, when you have been involved in professional sports since childhood, and then you find out that you have cancer. Now the only reward you want is life. And this is not a fiction, but the real story of our today's heroine.

At the age of 14, Maria Shorets began to engage in triathlon - a discipline in which an athlete must overcome a distance of three stages: swimming, cycling and running. She became a master of sports of international class, performed at the Olympic Games and planned to build her career further, but all aspirations ended at one point. The girl was told that she had acute leukemia - bone marrow cancer.

We talked with Maria and found out what it is like to lie in bed for months after many years of sports, what supports in the most difficult moments of treatment and how life changes after transplantation.

I realized that triathlon is my profession

My sports career began at the age of five. Mom took me to the pool and taught me how to swim with oversleeves - she works as a swimming coach at the university. At the age of seven, I was sent to a sports swimming group, where I practiced at first twice a week, and then more and more often, up to two workouts a day. I was good at it, but not so much that prospects in professional sports were visible.

When I turned 14, my mother was offered to send me to a triathlon. In this sport, there is always a lack of girls, and indeed people in general: triathlon has appeared relatively recently and is not very popular. At first I resisted because I became very attached to the swimming group. But it was summer and the pool was not working. There was nothing to do, so I still went to a few workouts and got involved. Then I went to the competition and in September I entered the ninth grade of the Olympic reserve school. This is how my triathlon journey began.

At the age of 17, I got into the Russian national team and constantly went to training camps. There I practiced almost all the time, except for the summer period, when the weather allows cycling, and in St. Petersburg, where I lived. Two years later, I became an international master of sports and began to consciously approach training.

At 23, I realized that triathlon is my profession, and began to train in Moscow with Igor Sysoev, the head coach of the Russian national triathlon team.

Everything that I was going for these 25 years, at one point just collapsed

All athletes want to get to the Olympic Games, but not everyone succeeds. I did it, and it turned out to be the most memorable start of my life.

The path was not easy. The selection for the Olympics begins in two years. Athletes accumulate points in the world session and, according to the sum of points for 14 starts, get into the Olympic simulator - a preliminary list of participants. If it is necessary to represent the country tomorrow, they will be sent.

A week before the final, 14th start, I performed well and was included in the list of athletes who should go to Rio. And the last stage screwed up and flew out of the simulator: I was overtaken by the closest competitors.

I was very upset. It seemed that the end of the world had just happened. Everything that I went to for these 25 years, at one point just collapsed. The coach put a lot on my getting to the Olympics, but everything was lost. For two weeks it was incredibly sad, but thanks to him for helping to cope with the psychological decline. We exhaled and started preparing for other competitions from scratch - as if nothing had happened. It didn't work out, and okay. So this is my fate.

A month later, international federations began to form their squads for the Olympics, and several national committees refused to participate in their athletes. So it happened with a girl from New Zealand: she was struck out of the simulator and included me, because I was next in the ranking.

When this news became known to everyone, the emotions were indescribable. Happiness overwhelmed both me and the coach - a very memorable event. It was with this attitude that we began to prepare for the start at the Olympic Games. In Rio, I performed at the level: I showed everything I could and got into the top 20 of the world triathlon ranking. I think it was one of the most successful years of my life in terms of sports.

I trained on painkillers for almost half a year

I have always had good health - I did not get sick with anything serious, except for chickenpox in childhood. But in 2017, I began to suspect that something was wrong with the body. I had constant injuries that didn't go away. The knee joint ached, and the examinations did not reveal anything serious, but I continued to feel discomfort and trained on painkillers for almost six months. I could not adequately perceive the load, because the body simply did not have time to recover.

I could not cope with work training and could not show the speeds that were required. The coach and I did not understand what was happening, because there were no deviations in the analyzes.

Herpes constantly appeared on the lips or stomatitis began throughout the mouth - it was impossible to eat, drink, or speak, because it was terribly painful.

At the end of the season, when the competition ends, the athletes have a little rest: training just a couple of times a week or not at all. I used this period to find out what was wrong with my body.

By the end of October, blood counts began to drop: hemoglobin, platelets, leukocytes and neutrophils. I began to read what this could be connected with, and a couple of times I came across articles about acute leukemia. There were thoughts of doing a bone marrow puncture in order to dismiss this version, but the hematologist refused in the direction. She assured me that this is just an infection that needs to be found and treated. However, I myself hoped that my condition was more associated with overtraining or some kind of virus that I caught and still could not fight back.

So I lived until the end of 2017. By this time, a subfebrile temperature was already regularly kept - about 37, 2 ° C. I was constantly experiencing a breakdown and in this terrible state I managed to continue training. Now I can hardly understand how I did it at all.

“The most difficult thing was to tell my mother about the disease”

2018 has come, and I have already bought tickets to Cyprus, where the new training camp was taking place. Before this event, all athletes are required to undergo an in-depth medical examination. I made it in St. Petersburg, and the same evening the doctors called me. They said that in the morning I had to urgently come to the research institute of hematology, because my indicators were life-threatening: leukocytes and neutrophils were at zero, and these are the cells that are responsible for immunity. Any infection could lead to sad consequences: the body could no longer fight it.

I went to the hospital with the certainty that I had some kind of serious virus. I thought that now they would take tests, make a weekly block of droppers and send them to Cyprus for training. In fact, a bone marrow puncture was awaiting me: the doctors pierced the bone in the sternum and took the necessary material for research. An hour and a half later, I already knew that I had bone marrow cancer, and I was again taken for a puncture to clarify the subspecies of leukemia. The doctor also did not expect that I had such a serious illness, so she did not take a sufficient amount of material to study right away.

I experienced the strongest shock. When the diagnosis was announced, the brain did not immediately perceive the information, but I intuitively began to cry. It was obvious that something terrible was happening.

I didn’t believe what they were telling me. You never think that something like this will happen to you. In tears, I first called the coach, and then my sister asked to pick me up, because I myself would hardly have been able to get anywhere.

The clinic is near my house, but first we went to a beauty salon. I decided that I should dye my eyebrows and eyelashes - if I am in the hospital, then I should at least look normal.

When we returned home, they began to wait for my mother from work. The most difficult thing was to tell her about the disease, but there was no panic or hysteria. I don’t know how she behaved when I was not there, but at that moment she behaved very well.

Hair fell out exactly on the tenth day after the first chemotherapy

The next day I went to the hospital again and started chemotherapy. The first time was the hardest. Already four hours after the injection of the drug, I felt bad. I vaguely remember what was happening: I had no strength at all, and all sorts of side effects came out like stomatitis, tonsillitis and a very high temperature, which did not go astray. I even finished the first course of chemistry a little earlier, because continuing it was life-threatening.

All people who undergo such therapy have a hope that their hair will not suffer. In my case, the hair fell out exactly on the tenth day after the first chemotherapy. They just poured in continuously, and in the end I had to shave them off. However, I was already ready for this: on difficult days, the realization quickly comes that appearance is far from the most important thing.

As a result, I underwent three courses of treatment. Each of them includes a week of round-the-clock chemotherapy and another two weeks in the hospital - this is the time when the patient recovers, because the body is left without protection.

The treatment period for bone marrow cancer can last from a year to indefinitely. It seemed that I would just go crazy: it is very difficult to stay in the hospital after such active years in sports, so I tried not to think about the timing. After the first chemotherapy, when I felt that my strength was returning, there was a temporary calm. You understand that it is no longer possible to worry - otherwise you will simply annoy yourself. You begin to accept what is happening to you, and you learn to put up with it. Life has changed, but it still exists.

Like many people in a similar situation, I wondered, "Why me?"

The answer does not exist, but in search of it, you begin to think that, probably, you did wrong with some person and this is some kind of retribution. But in fact, everyone once did not treat people very nicely - to a greater or lesser extent. And this does not mean at all that you will face cancer.

The more real problem, in my opinion, is that I did not take the body's signals seriously. Acute leukemia can be caused by immunodeficiency, and I often exercised when I felt unwell. At some point, one of the genes simply malfunctioned, broke down, and bone marrow cells ceased to be produced as needed.

It may seem strange, but even during the most difficult periods, I did not think that I could not cope. I did not admit that I could not get out or something would go wrong. When I was sent home after three weeks of chemistry courses, I had a wild urge to move. The athlete in me continued to live, so on the second day I sat on a bicycle rack and pedaled for at least 20 minutes. I even had enough strength to run 10-15 kilometers with a good training rhythm. I wanted to remain a living person with working muscles, and not just a body that lay in the hospital for three weeks and then barely got down the stairs to the car.

The date of bone marrow transplant can be considered a new birthday

At the end of three blocks of chemotherapy in St. Petersburg, I was offered to go to Israel for bone marrow transplantation. For a long time I could not decide on this, because I did not want to leave my family. But I was convinced that it is better to do a transplant in Israel: doctors have more experience in working with my disease, and a donor will be found much faster.

In mid-May 2018, I went abroad for the first time for an additional examination and signing documents. I spent three weeks there, returned to Russia, and on June 15 again flew to Israel with my mother, because I was assigned the date of transplantation - June 27, 2018. The process is so serious that, according to doctors, the date of bone marrow transplant can be considered a new birthday.

I was admitted to the hospital and underwent high-dose chemotherapy, which kills the bone marrow in the long bones. It is so strong that it devastates everything. The reaction of the body was very severe: I felt more sick than after the first chemotherapy in St. Petersburg. Fortunately, my mother was always nearby during the treatment. She lived with me in a sterile box and could shelter at any time when she felt chills, or go to the store for whatever she wanted. The patient really needs help with simple things and moral support.

Eight days later, the doctors performed a bone marrow transplant - they put in a dropper containing the donor's stem cells. At that moment, the period began, which turned out to be the most difficult for me - both physically and mentally. I was very worried and felt unstable: I felt hot and cold. I used guesses at myself: “What if it won’t take root and will need chemistry again? What if a relapse or side effects for life? When day after day is bad, you can think up a lot.

Good tests help to feel like a living person again

Chemotherapy changed the taste buds so much that it was impossible to eat after the transplant. I understood that it was necessary, but I could not stuff anything inside myself. It seemed to me that when food came into contact with the oral cavity, acid was released. My mother and I went through all possible products, and only ice cream did not cause disgust. Over time, chips were added to it.

On the 12th day after the transplant, the doctors started urging me to go for walks along the hospital corridors. I didn’t want to do this at all, because I didn’t have the strength. After chemistry in St. Petersburg, I ran more than 10 kilometers, and now I could not even get out of bed. In the first walk, my legs did not hold at all and I covered only 70 meters - I walked around the sofas in the hall several times.

I remember leaving the room and seeing so many people. For three weeks I only talked to my mother and nurse, and now I finally felt that I was returning to normal life.

Tears flowed involuntarily - it was uncomfortable for my reaction, but I could not stop this process. Over time, I learned to cover more and more distance, and I could walk about 3,000 steps by the time I was discharged.

Oddly enough, work helped to get out of negative thoughts during treatment. I collaborated with a sports company on distance training: communicated with clients and coaches. I couldn't give up everything, because the activities of the team would simply stop. On the one hand, I really didn’t want to do work, but on the other, it pulled me out of the routine in which you just lay and stare at the ceiling. Scrolling through social networks at this moment is impossible: there are only athletes. What you see does not give motivation when you cannot even get out of bed. In general, work helped me not to get depressed.

Close people also save: when someone is near, it makes the condition easier. Mom was with me and constantly told me something. Some friends wrote to me every day, just asked about their health and said what they were doing. It was absolutely enough to cheer up. It is important to take an interest in health more than once a month, but to maintain a daily conversation. I am incredibly grateful to the people who worried about me during such a difficult period.

In total, together with chemotherapy, I spent 27 days in an Israeli hospital, of which 19 - after transplantation. This is considered a good indicator because some patients are delayed for much longer.

In mid-September 2018, I felt that my strength was returning. The bone marrow began to work more stable and began to produce the cells I needed - leukocytes and neutrophils. Every week I came to the hospital, got tested and lived in anticipation of good results. When they say that everything is getting better, emotions are at the limit - you want to ride a bike more, chat with friends, arrange a longer run than yesterday. Good tests help you feel like a living person again.

After hospitalization, I began to appreciate the simplest things

I had practically no side effects after the transplant. Only once, after three months, there were problems with the joints of the hand: it was painful to bend and unbend it. I had to fly to Israel again, where the doctors prescribed steroids for me. Everything went away, but their reception was stretched out, since it is impossible to interrupt the treatment abruptly: it is dangerous for the body. As a result, my face was slightly swollen, although the dosage was very small compared to that which is prescribed, for example, for patients with lymphoma. Now I don't see any consequences from taking this drug - everything is fine.

After everything that happened, I became calmer. I stopped hurrying: if I got stuck in a traffic jam or someone cut me off, I don't feel any anger. I began to accept people as they are, and I also learned to look at different situations from two sides. All the difficulties began to seem small and insignificant. Some people during the treatment period dumped their problems on me and said how bad everything was with them, but I thought: “I’m in the hospital and I can’t go anywhere, but you live an active life and claim that everything is bad with you?”

Even after hospitalization, I began to appreciate the simplest things that are available to most. I was glad that I could just leave the house at any time, order coffee, walk along the embankment, swim and wash normally without a catheter that cannot be wetted.

I feel a sense of liberation and independence

Doctors after discharge did not give any recommendations in terms of sports. After acute leukemia, the logic is this: the patient is alive, and thank God. But I still started training and from time to time I take part in amateur competitions - when there is a desire and mood.

I do not regret at all that I left professional sports - rather, I am truly happy. When you consciously approach training and performance, you feel the pressure of leadership. You need to show an excellent result, because money is allocated for you. You are constantly worried: "Will I be able to or not?" Now I feel a sense of liberation and independence, because I can train and perform at my own pleasure.

More than two years later, my heart has not fully recovered, although I exercise regularly. If the muscles have somehow adapted to physical activity, then it is still hard for the heart - any slide on a bicycle or acceleration during a race raises the pulse to 180 beats per minute, and it falls slowly. The next day after training, I feel that the body has not yet recovered - it needs an extra day of rest.

I hope that gradually all indicators will improve, but even if not, I do not mind. Maybe I will always get tired more than an ordinary person, but I have good patience - you can live with this circumstance.

For two years now I have been working in the Russian Triathlon Federation: I collect statistics on the performances of our national team, work with news and maintain social networks. Recently I wanted to start training - and I became a triathlon coach for amateur athletes. Let's see what happens in a couple of years.

If you are currently struggling with a serious illness, just admit that it has already happened. We cannot influence the past, so all that remains is to relive the present. Stop reading about your illness on the Internet and try to do something constantly. As bad as it is, remember that a lot of people do it. You will succeed, you just need to be patient.