Georgia Lymphoma 5k Walk in Norcross this month

On May 20, 2005, Jessica Berry, 22, passed away in her boyfriend’s arms, a victim of Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system.

It could just as easily have been the boyfriend; Justin McKinney had twice battled cancer and won.

And so when he returns later this month to Norcross’s Wesleyan School where he met Jessica, it will be both a personal and public denouncement of a disease that strikes some 75,000 Americans each year.

There McKinney will participate in his first and the state’s fifth Georgia Lymphoma 5k Walk, an annual event sponsored by the Lymphoma Research Foundation, the nation’s largest voluntary health organization devoted to funding research and providing information about the disease. “Everyone finds a cause in their life,” said McKinney, a 28-year-old resident of Sandy Springs. “This is ours.”

McKinney was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2000 during his sophomore year at Georgia Tech. About year later, not only had it spread to his chest and lymph nodes, Berry, his high school sweet heart and a freshman at Agnes Scott, was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma.

“We knew what each other was going through,” said McKinney. “We were able to be there for each other.”

For the next four years, McKinney said Berry fought but in the end she was no match for the disease.

Although Jessica is his motivation, McKinney said the walk, slated for April 25, is really about the over 500,000 Americans currently living with lymphoma, their friends and loved ones.

“It’s about funding research for better treatment options and hopefully a cure,” he said.

There is some progress in that direction, said Christopher Flowers, director of the lymphoma program at Emory University. “One of the things that’s very important about this is research is making dramatic strides in treating these cancers,” he said.

Flowers said that there are 61 different varieties of lymphomas and now that researchers are beginning to understand the biology of those they have also come to realize that each needs to treated differently.

“We’re also developing brain trusts to coordinate clinical trials and others kinds of clinical research studies,” Flowers said.

Still, the number of people diagnosed with lymphomas is rising, exacerbated by exposure to pesticides, radiation and HIV.

“But when you look at all those factors together, it still doesn’t explain the rise,” Flowers said. “There’s much more research needed in the area of epidemiology to understand why they occur and ways to prevent them.”

That’s the reason he’s walking, McKinney said.

Although organizers expect several hundred cancer survivors and their loved ones to participate in the walk, many more who support the foundation’s work have made monetary donations and will be there in spirit.

Jennifer Shaw and her father Dave Baxter, both of Norcross, made donations to friends who like them have lost a loved one to the disease.

As they have done for the past several years, Jennifer Shaw said her family will participate in the annual Light The Night Walk in honor of her brother Jon Baxter, who died within three weeks of his diagnosis with Mantle Cell lymphoma in 2006. The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society sponsors that walk, Oct. 10 at Centennial Olympic Park.

Dave Baxter said his son began complaining of a fever on Oct. 22, 2006 and three days later on his wedding anniversary was admitted to the hospital.

Doctors, he said, ran every test possible but couldn’t determine a cause for the fever and sent Jon Baxter home with a steroid regimen on his birthday Oct. 31. He started to feel better but after the steroids were gone, he felt sick again.

By his wife’s birthday Nov. 2, Baxter was back in the hospital. He died Nov. 5.

It took an autopsy to determine the cause of death: lymphoma, although a different type, it was the same disease that had killed his grandfather years earlier.

“We still can’t believe it,” said Dave Baxter.