Outrunning a grim outlook
Facing terminal illness, Bob Marshall trains for marathon
By Jeremiah Stettler
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 03/19/2007 01:11:39 AM MDT


Click photo to enlargeBob Marshall has been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease.... (Chris Detrick/The Salt Lake Tribune)«123»HOLLADAY - Bob Marshall can't tie his own shoes, but he plans to run the Boston Marathon.
The father of five won't let Lou Gehrig's Disease outrun his dream, not when he has watched his wife, Debi, beat the odds against terminal cancer.
Debi was supposed to die 14 years ago of advanced Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. She's still alive and fighting.
Together, this Holladay couple has earned the nickname "Team Terminal" - a name bestowed by their children to reflect with humor and tragedy a marriage that has seemed destined to end in death since the early 1990s.
"We don't believe in miracles," Debi said. "We depend on them."
Their troubles began in 1992 when Debi, a young mother with five children at home, developed egg-sized tumors on her neck, beneath her arms, behind her knees and elsewhere. She became weak and exhausted, scarcely able to climb the stairs without resting.
After first dismissing the growths as a product of mononucleosis, doctors diagnosed Debi with a severe case of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The prognosis was grim.
"It is too far gone," she remembers the doctor saying. "You have hours to days to live."
Debi prepared her children for her death, celebrating each December day as Christmas and shifting some of the day-to-day duties - such as helping children with their homework - to her husband.
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She even selected the women her husband could marry.
But Debi lived through Christmas. And through the next.
"I decided to fight to live, instead of waiting around to die," she said.
Fourteen years and 64 chemotherapy treatments later, Debi continues to fight her cancer. It still lurks within her, sapping her energy and requiring blood transfusions every three weeks.
Times have worsened for the family.
A placard above Debi's dining room table, etched with Winston Churchill's famous World War II phrase, "Never, never, never give up," no longer applies to her alone.
Doctors recently diagnosed her husband with a terminal disease, too.
Within three weeks of qualifying for the Boston Marathon in St. George last October, Bob discovered that the muscle spasms in his upper chest were linked to Lou Gehrig's disease, an irreversible disease that attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Victims generally survive three to five years.
While Bob's pace has slowed since his diagnosis - extending his eight-minute mile by three minutes - he hasn't given up his goal of running in the Boston Marathon. It may take him five hours, but Bob plans to finish that "granddaddy" of marathons on April 16.
"I'm still able to run," he said.
Even so, the disease has taken a toll. Bob can't unscrew a water bottle, start the car or button up his shirt. Someday, he may not be able to breathe.
Bob's diagnosis has turned the world "upside down" for this family, which leaned on dad and prepared for the absence of mom.
The children - who range in age from 15 to 25 - now face the possibility of losing both parents.
"I tried screaming at the gods," Debi wrote in this year's Christmas letter. "I tried breaking down. I tried not eating. But in the end, the ALS [Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease] was still there."
The children talk about seeing the world differently from their peers, who they describe as getting too caught up in the minutia of life. They acknowledge some intolerance for less serious health problems and say they have learned to appreciate their days more.
Although frightened sometimes, the family is coping - as it has for the last 14 years.
"This is round two," said the couple's oldest daughter, Tiffany. "I feel like a pro now."
Bob and Debi haven't given up hope in seeing grandchildren someday. They don't sugar-coat the rough days ahead, but say they are clinging to life and celebrating the little things, such as sunrises.
"We're going to live," Debi said. "And we're going to find joy in living."
jstettler@sltrib.com

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5469148