By Ed Karvoski Jr., Contributing Writer
Shrewsbury – An avid runner for 38 years, Paula Curran-Hayeck recently organized a cross-country team at St. Mary School. For several years, she has directed the 5K road race in conjunction with the parish’s annual family festival.
In May 2012, St. Mary Parish held a fundraiser with proceeds donated to her group’s participation in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer.
“It was packed with people,” she said of the local fundraiser. “I’m somewhat of a private person, and that was the first time I stood up in front of everybody and said, ‘I’m a breast cancer survivor.’”
Curran-Hayeck was diagnosed in the spring of 2010 at her annual mammogram. That was soon after she took a good friend to her last chemotherapy treatment.
“No one was more surprised than myself,” she said. “There’s no breast cancer in my family. I took care of myself and did all the healthy things in life.”
She received the diagnosis midweek. That weekend she kept her plan to participate in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in honor of her good friend.
“I was the first person in my group to finish,” she said. With a grin, she added, “I thought maybe I’d walk the cancer out of me.”
Two weeks later, she was in Newton-Wellesley Hospital for a lumpectomy. Following surgery, she underwent chemo and radiation treatment at that hospital’s Vernon Cancer Center. She lost her hair, but not her positive attitude thanks to a supportive family, her husband Mike and their sons Michael, now 13, and John, now 16.
“We all went through it together with a sense of humor,” she recalled. “My boys were going into the fourth and sixth grades at the time, and my husband was fabulous. I had a wig and we all tried it on.”
Also helping her get through the rigorous course of treatment was a determination to continue running.
“The running was my therapy,” she said. “The first day I had chemo, I came home and I went out for a run. I didn’t want to let go of who I am.”
That summer, two days after a chemo treatment, she and her husband ran the Dennis 5 Mile Road Race on the Cape. Curran-Hayeck remembers him assuring her that she didn’t need to run the race, but she felt otherwise.
“I felt that I’m stronger than the cancer,” she said.
That autumn, she and her older son ran the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5K.
“I wasn’t feeling well that day and I told him to do this for mom,” she explained. “He took off and he ran the race unbelievably well. I finally came along and he was waiting for me at the finish line. When he put his arm around me, I knew that we were all in this together.”
While Curran-Hayeck had completed the Boston Marathon twice previously, it was particularly special when she ran it in 2011. She was a member of a team fundraising for the Newton-Wellesley Hospital and its Vernon Cancer Center, which is located at the marathon’s 17th mile.
“I came up to mile 17 and my doctors were there waiting for me,” she relayed. “I thanked them, saying, ‘I’m here today because of you.’”
In 2012, she reunited with the group who participated in the 2010 Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in support of her good friend. This time, the group honored Curran-Hayeck.
“It was a full circle for me,” she noted. “This time, I walked as a breast cancer survivor.”
On Sunday, Oct. 5, the family will be together in Boston for the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk in observance of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.