Why I Ride: Lauren Treu

What can I say about my mother that would even do justice to what an amazing woman she is… She is my rock and the person I want to be like most in this world. We are a single mother/daughter relationship, so it has always been ‘us against the world’ mindset. We can conquer anything together and I love that about us. The woman has been through so much in life, she has triumphed through a traumatic brain injury (TBI) that left her re-learning most functioning things like: simple math, making grocery lists, driving, critical thinking… Then after finally getting into a new routine of life, coping with a TBI (which is completely life changing), BAM – she is hit with the BIG O (hence our team name)!

She had all of the symptoms, but many are just normal things that happen when you get older. She had a burning in her stomach that she thought was just from a new medicine, and she was experiencing fatigue that also comes with a TBI, so we didn’t this anything of it. Her stomach was getting larger and hurting more and finally the doctors realized she had a LARGE CANTALOUPE size tumor! When they did the surgery to remove it they found smaller ones on her ovaries that didn’t show up on the scan. Needless to say, we were so thankful for that enormous tumor because they would have never found the small one that was really the one that was high grade cancerous.

She was mainly in shock about the diagnosis. Even throughout the process of chemo she would randomly say, “I have cancer. How weird is that?!” Really, we were both just eager to get the treatment started and fight the disease head on!

The chemo process did start to become a burden for her, and she dreaded it about halfway through. At first, we were really gung ho about getting it started and fighting this, and then about chemo 3 or 4 it got a bit harder to be motivated to fight.  Then round 5 she began to see the light at the end of the tunnel again and the mood picked back up. I also began to see a lot of her fatigue and symptoms we thought were from the TBI get better!

My mom is a pretty tough cookie and doesn’t like to complain much. She had a great attitude throughout treatment. The hardest part was she wanted to get back to her life and seeing people (yoga/water class buddies) and she couldn’t because of the surgery. I think the entire experience was great though, there were a lot of people that stepped up to help that she didn’t even know. She was able to grow a lot of relationships that way and better others, which she is very thankful for!

Ovarian cancer brought us even closer, and we actually both really enjoyed our ‘chemo weekends’ together. We would basically just hang out and watch movies/talk and mom would sleep… for an entire weekend every 3 weeks!

We just celebrated her 1 year survival/chemo-free party on Saturday night! She is doing well – has some neuropathy in her feet and side effects like that, but her levels are good. She is training for a pilgrimage in Spain (camino de compostela) that her and her friends she studied abroad with there 40 years ago will walk in June!

The fact that Ovarian cancer is such a silent killer, but it doesn’t have to be pains me. We need to have every women get routine screenings just like breast cancer. This can easily be caught early and doesn’t need to have such a low survival rate.

I ride for my mom and her future. I ride for every woman and family that has been through the same thing we have. And most importantly I ride to remember this whole experience of The Big O and how much it has changed my life.

Join Lauren and other riders by signing up to ride with us at Wheel to Survive Dallas.

Donate to support Lauren’s ride at Wheel to Survive Dallas.