Friends’ cancer diagnoses turn into a real marathon
‘‘I’ll run for you’’ is what two Waikato friends said when a common health battle brought them closer despite being countries apart. They spoke to Te Aorewa Rolleston.
What began as a friendship for two women from Matamata has become an unbreakable bond which has transcended countries and a gut-wrenching battle against cancer.
This past September the two friends completed 10 years of ‘‘running for each other’’ a pact they made when both of them were dealt the same diagnosis.
Vanessa Oshima and Caroline Steer met 40 years ago as school students. Being in a small town, the two of them naturally ‘‘just connected’’.
In 2012 while in the shower, Steer ‘‘felt something wasn’t right’’- a lump and after going for a mammogram she eventually got the diagnosis, it was cancer.
‘‘You go out of body, and it gets in your head . . . even when you’re trying to be upbeat and everything you do go to the dark places of what if it’s lifethreatening and oh my kids are so young,’’ Steer said.
Thousands of kilometres away in Japan, Oshima decided, if she couldn’t be by Steer’s side in person she was going to run in her friend’s honour instead and the project #Outruncancer was born.
‘‘I just flippantly said you know if me going for a run energises you than that’s what I’ll do,’’ Oshima said.
For a year Oshima was ‘‘streak running’’ on the other side of the world while Steer went through 16 rounds of chemotherapy.
She ran 5km every day, raising funds for cancer awareness and along the way other runners joined in.
‘‘I was running alongside Caroline’s journey,’’ she said.
But in 2017, things would become personal for Oshima. Out of the blue, she too noticed something wasn’t right.
‘‘When it was confirmed it was breast cancer, it was like a radio station when there’s static, and you can’t quite hear the words, it was like that, I just couldn’t believe it,’’ she said.
‘‘I run every day, I do marathons I thought, and I didn’t have cancer in my family either.’’
It was close to midnight in New Zealand when Steer, who was in remission, found out her friend was now facing a battle all too familiar.
‘‘I just didn’t want her to go through it, I was really hoping that it would be really easy, ‘nothing to see here’, so when she told me I was just gutted . . . we chatted for half an hour on the phone, we talked, and we cried,’’ Steer said.
‘‘Then I said to Vanessa, it was lovely talking to you, but I’ve got to go.’’
Steer hopped off the call and ‘‘laced up’’ her shoes before going for a run that evening, Oshima said, because ‘‘she made a promise that if I ever went through breast cancer she would run for me’’.
Over the span of a decade, the two friends have raised more than $35,000 for cancer awareness, and together they have run more than 28,000 km.
Oshima has since undergone a mastectomy and is currently in the clear.
But in September last year Steer was dealt another blow when doctors ‘‘found a mass’’ in her pancreas.
The two friends lock eyes and tears well up, she is now facing a much tougher bout with stage four cancer.
‘‘Once again I didn’t feel unwell at all . . . I got some good advice, let yourself feel sad maybe an hour a day,’’ Steer said.
‘‘My focus is, okay what can I do . . . it’s not a cure, but it gives me a sense of control.’’
Ten years on Oshima is running to honour her friend once again.
The pair have created The Outrun Cancer Podcast sharing their views as well as those of their family during the course of their cancer journey’s and Oshima has written a book ‘The Bucket’- A journey to finding joy – a compilation of the simple but meaningful messages she dedicated to Steer.
‘‘I really encourage everyone to always check,’’ Steer said.
They will ‘‘never stop running’’ the friends say, it is the promise they made over a decade ago and one they will keep until either of them can’t run any further.
‘‘You don’t start together, you finish together.’’
‘‘When it was confirmed it was breast cancer, it was like a radio station when there’s static, and you can’t quite hear the words, it was like that, I just couldn’t believe it. ’’ Vanessa Oshima