New diet sparks rebound from Lyme disease

With cancer pervading both sides of her family, and anticipating a questionable future for her teenage children, Kennebunk-based Jane VanDerburgh Dumais, 44, wanted to walk in the 2009 Dempsey Challenge.

“If I could do just part of the 5k, I would feel I had achieved something,” Dumais said of her thinking at the time, noting Lyme disease and accruing fibromyalgia had relegated her to dependence on a cane and sometimes a wheelchair.

Ballooning to 180 pounds, the former registered nurse had seen a litany of doctors and specialists since 2006, having lost a large portion of her cognitive and neurological abilities, developing Lyme-related arthritis, migraines, vertigo and also losing some of her hearing. (The hearing issue was later attributed to a specific antibiotic she was on, and was reversed.) “I had no quality of life and the stress on my family was overwhelming, making the depression I was suffering as a result of all this even worse,” Dumais said.

Misdiagnosed in 2004 — despite being tested for Lyme disease and getting a positive result, Dumais says — she deteriorated for two years before going to an infectious disease specialist in Boston, who confirmed she had the disease. “He concluded I’d had it since 1995, when I’d first experienced a series of rashes,” Dumais recalled.

By that point, the disease had advanced to where treatment with antibiotics commonly used for Lyme disease was not expected to provide full recovery. Dumais became so sick, in fact, she was compelled to leave her husband and children behind to move back in with her parents in Portland, who were better able to care for her around the clock.

In April, 2010, while leaving for another doctor’s appointment, Dumais’ vertigo got the better of her and she plunged down a flight of stairs, fracturing a vertebrae.

“That accident was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said, explaining that following considerable bed rest and healing of the vertebrae, she was scheduled to see Kennebunk neuromusculoskeletal specialist Dr. Charles Carr that June for some osteopathic manipulation.

Carr, as it happened, was intimately familiar with Lyme disease, having worked with stricken patients in Old Lyme, Conn., the namesake for the disease. Telling her that 60 percent of the body’s immune system is controlled by the intestines, Carr suggested Dumais go on a strict diet free of gluten, wheat, preservatives, refined sugars and dairy. He also suggested a low-carb and Mediterranean diet (no beef, lots of dark leafy greens, etc.), opting for organic fruits and vegetables, wild-caught fish and free-range chicken and turkey.

Dumais embraced the strenuous diet regimen because, she said, there was nothing left of her life as she knew it. One month later, already noting marked mental acuity and the absence of migraines, she replaced the wheelchair and cane with two miles of pool jogging. By August she was walking the beach, working up to six miles (the distance of a 10k) with a friend. In October she walked in the Challenge, as she will this year, hoping to reach a point in the future where she can run. Dumais now calls Carr her “miracle doctor.”

“The Dempsey Challenge was a huge goal for me,” she said, referencing all the hospital patients with cancer she helped treat as a nurse and concerns about her children’s future given the cancer in her family. Dumais trains on the Eastern Trail, walking six miles three times a week. She’s lost 75 pounds in a year, going from a size 18 to a size four. “I have endurance and stamina,” she said, recalling a hug from Patrick Dempsey at the end of last year’s Challenge. “The hug was a really big bonus.”

Family cancer, car costs ignite a cycling passion

Bob Rand brandishes an official Road ID bracelet on his wrist. It carries contact information in the event he is hit by a car, knocked from his bike and found unconscious. Given the amount of time spent and vast distances travelled on his bike, it’s a possibility.

Rand cycled 3,200 miles last year during off-hours from his job as Androscoggin Bank vice president and information systems manager, and most would agree that at 51 he’s in the prime of his life — and aptly primed for the 2011 Dempsey Challenge.

“I started riding about five years ago,” Rand said, adding he pauses in winter, but not because of elements that would deter most people such as a walloping Maine snowstorm or ice floes on Canal Street. “The road just gets narrower from the plows,” the Lewiston resident explained, noting that indeed he has been “bumped” by a car.

A decorated runner in college, Rand broke his ankle in his senior year and hung up his track shoes for nearly three decades. “It was cubicle life,” he described of a career in banking, first with Key and then Androscoggin Bank.

When his children, now 20 and 22, came of driving age, Rand decided that rather than purchase a third car with the price of gas and insurance, he would lend them his and buy himself a bike, cycling the four miles round-trip back and forth to work. In 2009, when the first Dempsey Challenge was announced, he thought of his two-time cancer survivor mother — who now lives in Hawaii with his brother, but visits the Dempsey Center on annual visits — and made the commitment.

“I was still in the mindset of avoiding hills but taking the shortest route home,” Rand said of the four-mile-a-day cycling habit that defined his physical fitness level before the Challenge. “This was to be a 25-mile bike ride (for the Dempsey Challenge), and I just rode — like Forrest Gump — I just got out and starting riding,” he said of his increasingly extended practice sessions. In fact he would ride 30, 40 or 50 miles round-trip some nights or weekends to Androscoggin Bank branches in Freeport, Brunswick, Lisbon, South Paris and elsewhere to prepare.

Revealing he made a mistake the first year of the Challenge in only registering for the 25-mile bike ride, Rand corrected it in year two, riding 100 miles, which he anticipates doing this year as well.

Raising the fitness flag, Rand helped organize a team of 37 cyclists, runners and walkers from among Androscoggin Bank’s 180 employees — raising funds along the way so any employee could afford the event, which requires $185 to $225 per person to participate. Rand even takes team members on a Dempsey trail walk every Friday at lunch to get them in the mood.

“I’m almost embarrassed calling attention to myself,” the somewhat laconic Rand said of his efforts to keep himself in shape, noting his doctor is happy because he has lost 40 pounds in two years through cycling. Rand’s wife, Phyllis, 50, has started running, as has Rand again. She also cycles and will participate in the Dempsey Challenge’s 25-mile bike course.

“I read that one of Patrick Dempsey’s driving forces is to get people moving, which is what I really want to do,” Rand said.

Cancer victim goes from athlete to Couch-to-5K, and back

For 55-year-old Neil Bement, a Central Maine Medical Center emergency department technician from Lewiston, preparing for the Dempsey Challenge has involved a much different set of personal challenges than a rigorous workout schedule. “Losing 60 pounds during my illness, a huge day for me was getting out of bed and making it to the living room to sit in my recliner,” said the two-time colon cancer survivor.

Prior to his diagnosis and treatment, Bement was an accomplished swimmer and member of the national ski patrol. He typically bicycled 1,000 miles a year, participated in the American Lung Association’s three-day 180-mile Trek Across Maine, hiked thousands of miles across Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire, and tackled the Appalachian Trail.

Completely asymptomatic the first time around in 2006 (the cancer was found during a routine physical), Bement underwent a colectomy, where a section of cancerous colon was removed, followed by six months of chemotherapy. He was given a clean bill of health.

The second time, in 2008, palpable symptoms of cancer emerged, but, Bement said, he had to battle his insurance companies for an unscheduled colonoscopy sooner than the next three-year procedure mandated by his plan. Cancer was again detected. In an effort to avoid an aggressive form of treatment involving complete removal of the colon and resulting ileostomy, Bement went “doc shopping,” discovering Dr. Parker Roberts in Portland. Roberts prescribed pre-surgical chemo and radiation, and performed another colectomy and an ileostomy — the latter procedure to rest the surgical site with the anticipation of reversing it in the future. Bement is back to working 12-hour days at CMMC, though having undergone about 20 procedures to correct various issues to date.

“Last year, I did the survivor walk,” said Bement. Swallowing his athlete’s pride and availing himself this year of the YMCA’s successful Couch-to-5K program, Bement increased his endurance enough to walk in this past summer’s FitFest. He has committed to the Dempsey Challenge’s 10k walk this year.

And despite another surgical procedure scheduled for Dec. 1, “I’ve also maintained my ski patrol license and will be skiing this winter,” Bement vowed, adding, “The Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope & Healing is a celebration of life. We’re living with cancer, not dying from it. It’s not a sad, poor us affair. It’s a party.”

Cancer free and inspired to ride

According to health coach Pamela Ward Edgecomb, 51, who co-owns Auburn’s Central Maine Conditioning Center with Bob Brainerd, a cancer-free family history is no insurance against the disease.

Diagnosed with estrogen-positive breast cancer on her husband’s birthday, Dec. 26, 2006, Edgecomb underwent a complete mastectomy and reconstruction, starting on Tamoxifen, which inhibits the production of estrogen. Unable to tolerate the drug, a preventative hysterectomy followed nine months later.

“I was always more of an exerciser than a real athlete,” she conceded, “though prior to diagnosis I had played around with the idea of getting a bike, so I finally did it (after the surgeries) and rode in the first Dempsey Challenge.” In fact Edgecomb was one of the keynote speakers and got to ride with Patrick Dempsey and five Olympians for 10 miles before the other cyclists began.

Upping the ante, Edgecomb, who remains cancer-free, continued to test herself by doing the second Dempsey Challenge, the Trek Across Maine and the Eastern Trail Alliance Maine Lighthouse Ride (she took the 100-mile option). She also logged 300 miles with P.J. Mears, who rode from Maine to Florida for charity, and faces this year’s Dempsey Challenge with 100 miles firmly on her radar screen.

“The first year I started riding, I was doing about eight to 15 mph and now I’m up to 13 or 15, depending on the terrain,” Edgecomb said, noting she also teaches spinning classes.

“Among the reasons I ride are to live in the moment, feel my body, breathe deeply and be reminded that I’m alive,” Edgecomb said. Any pain or discomfort she experiences is nothing compared to what she’s been through, she said. “Cancer defines some of who I am, but it’s not going to dictate my life.”

From Dubai with love and donations

Spurred on by fellow pound-shedder Dee Hymel on Facebook’s “Game On! Diet” community (the book was written by a “Grey’s Anatomy” producer), Dubai resident Marina Dzhumaeva will soon arrive in Maine to run her first-ever 10k in the Dempsey Challenge.

Calling herself a “foodie” and someone who loves to cook and feed others, the 34-year-old full-time working mom to 5-year-old Masha revealed in a recent email she has struggled with weight all her life and had high blood pressure and migraines. Though she’d sometimes work out at a gym, running was not her metier. In fact she admits she was awful at it.

Further inspired by the fundraising prowess of Hymel’s friend Shannon Gilmartin — the two women were the top fundraisers for the Dempsey Challenge in 2010 and members of the Buddha Rubbers fundraising team — she emulated them.

“I always had the urge to help people — to do charity work — so meeting Dee and Shannon online was a sign from above,” said Dzhumaeva, a transplant from Russia who is a branch manager for a beverage logistics company. She started training for the Challenge in February by jogging 30 to 45 minutes on a treadmill or at the park, often battling Dubai’s excessively hot and humid climate.

Buoyed by her husband, Dovran, who made the first donation to her effort and who she calls her “very best friend,” Dzhumaeva has raised $2,000 for the Dempsey Center through her amateur photography work in Dubai, though she has no personal connection to cancer.

“I don’t want to be a passive part that sits behind the PC on another side of the planet and just sends money,” Dzhumaeva said via email. “I want to meet people working at the Dempsey Center, touch and feel the atmosphere of the Challenge, meet my awesome Buddha Rubbers team, especially Shannon Gilmartin and Dee Hymel.”

She also notes she has lost weight, lowered her blood pressure and remains migraine-free as a result of her stepped-up training, which now involves running three to five miles at a time.

While Dzhumaeva admits she would like to meet Patrick Dempsey, she explains her interest is not in the “Grey’s Anatomy” star as a celebrity figure, but as “the man who is busy with so many things in his life: movies, the cancer center, racing, perfume. Yet, I read in the media he is very devoted to his family and spends quality time with his kids. So I want to ask Mr. Dempsey, how does he manage to keep the balance between work, hobby and his family? Eternal question of a working parent!”

Dzhumaeva added, “At the end of the day, the only thing that matters for me is that my efforts helped to make someone else’s day brighter and closer to being disease-free.”

Drink to your loved ones

For those who want to be hydrated and inspired during their athletic pursuits, and also give to the Dempsey Challenge, an upper New York State-based company with links to the Challenge has a unique answer.

Aquavation allows customers to put a personal message and photo on a BPA-free water bottle, with 15 percent of the cost going to the Dempsey Challenge.

A number of Challenge participants have already created memorial bottles featuring words and pictures of loved ones in whose memory they are running or biking in the Challenge.

And $3 of the $20 cost for each bottle goes to the Challenge. A design has been created just for the Challenge, allowing room for personalization with photos and text, for those wanting to link their bottles with the Challenge.

For more information and to order, go to http://www.aquavation.org/

For more information on the Dempsey Challenge

Go to dempseychallenge.org or call toll-free 1-866-990-1499.