TURN FOR THE BETTER ON NASCAR CIRCUIT
When Martin Truex Jr. gets behind the wheel at the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series today at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway, his partner of 11 years, Sherry
Pollex, will be cheering him on from their North Carolina home — and counting her lucky stars that she’s still alive to do it.
“When someone tells you you are going to die, nothing again is ever normal,” Sherry told the Track. “But this is the new normal and I’m blessed to be here and have a life at all, that’s the way I look at it now.”
Pollex, 37, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2014. She underwent eight hours of surgery and recently completed more than a year and a half of chemotherapy. And now she’s dedicated to spreading the word about early detection and proper treatment.
“I was diagnosed at Stage 4,” she said. “The survival rate is about 30 percent. Had I been properly diagnosed at Stage 1 or 2, the survival rate is 90 percent.”
Pollex said she began to feel ill in April of 2014, suffering near-constant pelvic pain.
“I went to my general practitioner who sent me to an ob/gyn, who said I had normal ovarian cysts,” she recalled. “Then I was sent to a gastroenterologist, who diagnosed irritable bowel syndrome. Four months later, I was in so much pain I could barely stand, and I went back to the ob/gyn. I was being bounced around like a pinball.”
Finally, Pollex called a family friend who was the first doctor to perform a CT scan.
“He called me right back to the hospital and told me to bring family,” she said. “I knew it was bad.”
The cancer had spread to her abdomen and rib cage. Five days later, Sherry underwent surgery where “doctors were literally picking tumors out of my body.”
Once she regained her strength, she underwent six months of intensive chemotherapy, then opted to do another year of chemo because of the high recurrence rates.
An estimated 22,000 women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer this year, and an estimated 14,000 will die from complications related to ovarian cancer in 2016, according to the National Cancer Institute. There is no screening test for it.
Which is why Sherry and Martin became brand ambassadors for Aspira Labs’
OVA1 blood test, which evaluates the risk of cancer in a pelvic mass and helps patients get to the right specialist for surgery.
“I was lucky that I found a doctor who was smart enough to put me in the hands of a gynecologic oncologist,” Sherry said. “And that’s the whole point of OVA1. It can help diagnose a pelvic mass and get you to the right physician. If you don’t got to a gynecologic oncologist, your chances of survival plummet.”
Sherry has recovered enough to begin traveling with Martin again, although she decided to skip today’s
Bad Boy Off Road 300 race in Louden. Truex won the first race in the Chase for
the Sprint Cup in Chicagoland last week, so he will advance to the next round regardless of how he does in New Hampshire. But Sherry said every time he gets behind the wheel, he wants to win.
“There’s no pressure,” she said. “He doesn’t have to win, but race car drivers always want to win.”
For more information, go to knowpelvicmass.com