Survivor, family share spotlight in Race for the Cure ceremony
When the diagnosis came — stage 4 metastatic breast cancer — Liz Miesen wasn’t shocked.
She knows it’s not a reaction most women would have to such grim news. But Miesen had been there before.
Her first brush with cancer was in 2012, when she had a brain tumor removed at the age of 32. So when she found a lump while showering in the fall of 2016, she knew what to expect.
“I just sort of braced myself because I had already walked the cancer road before,” said Miesen, now 39. “I feel like God had kind of prepared me to be able to hear the news.”
As a former oncology nurse, she understands the seriousness of her prognosis. Still, doctors at the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital at Ohio State University have worked with Miesen to develop an aggressive treatment plan.
It’s been a long year and a half for Miesen and her Worthington Hills family Miesen while undergoing treatment
— husband Nick and children Stella, 11; Charlie, 9; and Katherine, 7. It was a period filled with five months of chemotherapy, a mastectomy, five radiation treatments to her hip (where physicians discovered the cancer had spread) and 30 radiation treatments to her chest wall.
But, fortunately, Miesen’s cancer has been in remission since August.
With that in mind, Miesen should be in a bit higher of spirits Saturday during the Komen Columbus Race for the Cure than she was in
2017, when she was sick and weak from radiation treatments. She’ll also have the honor of sharing her journey and inspiring others as this year’s honorary race chair.
The position gives Miesen a platform to advocate for improved cancer treatment — she and others from Komen went to Washington, D.C., in March to lobby Congress — and to provide encouragement to women who, like her, are battling the disease.
“She just has such a positive outlook on life,” said Kaki Scala, the race director.
Miesen’s family will join her onstage as she gives a short speech before the race kicks off at 9:45 a.m. Downtown. Scala said that this is the first year Komen Columbus has taken the initiative to not only recognize a woman with breast cancer but her family as well.
After all, a breast-cancer diagnosis affects an entire family. In the Miesen family’s case, Nick Miesen decided to sell his two businesses so he could take care of the kids and the house.