Cancer survivor to carry Relay for Life’s torch

John Mitchell will spend part of Friday night carrying a torch.

Joined by his wife, Pam, and their children, Taylor, 11, and Matt, 6, he’ll be at Haskell Stadium for the American Cancer Society’s ninth annual Relay for Life fund-raiser.

Plans call for Mitchell, a cancer survivor, to tote the torch through the stadium around 9 p.m. In his wake, volunteers will light luminaries in the stadium and on the track.

“We’ve not done it this way before,” said Maggie York, one of the event’s organizers. “We think it’ll add meaning. This is a family that knows what it’s like to battle cancer.”

In keeping with past Relays for Life, York said, luminaries will form the letters H-O-P-E. The all-night fund-raiser ends at 7 a.m. Saturday.

Mitchell, 50, had his first brush with cancer almost seven years ago, a few days after his son, Matt, was born.

“I noticed that a mole on my back had changed; for some reason, it didn’t look the same,” Mitchell said this week, minutes before leaving for Broken Arrow Park to watch Matt’s latest T-ball game.

The mole, about the size of a small pea, turned out to be malignant. He had it removed.

“They said I was OK but to come in and have it checked a couple times a year,” he said.

John Mitchell, far left, a cancer survivor, will carry the torch at the candle-lighting ceremony kicking off the Lawrence Relay for Life. His family includes, from left, wife Pam and children Taylor, 11, and Matt, 6. The family is pictured Wednesday at Matt's T-ball game at Broken Arrow Park.

Two years later, he noticed some swelling in his left armpit. The cancer, he soon learned, had spread to his lymph nodes.

“They operated right away and removed that lymph node and 12 others,” said Mitchell, who works for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment in Topeka.

Afterward, Mitchell’s doctors put him on Interferon.

“Interferon fights cancer by ramping up your natural immune system,” Mitchell said, noting he had three injections a week for a year.

Interferon’s side effects, he said, include weakness, fever and depression.

“I felt like I had the flu for a year,” he said. “I’d go to work in the morning and get my shot in the afternoon because I’d be so weak, I couldn’t work. I’d have to go home and go to bed.”

But the Interferon worked. Mitchell has been cancer-free for five years.

“When you’re going through that, you live one day at a time,” Mitchell said. “It really makes you think like with me, my second son had just been born, and I’m wondering if I’ll be around to see him grow up. And, of course, you’re always asking yourself, ‘Why is this happening to me?'”

These days, Mitchell says he’s back to enjoying life.

“My doctor says the chances for reoccurrence are about the same as being hit by lightning or crossing the street and being hit by a car,” he said.

Mitchell’s torch-carrying duties don’t include giving a speech.

“That’s good,” he said, laughing.

But if they did, Mitchell said his message would be “to have faith, seek good medical care, follow your doctor’s recommendations and maintain a positive outlook all four of those things are very important.”