Sherry Pollex keeps the faith as she seeks answers on cancer treatment – The Athletic

MOORESVILLE, N.C. Its a warm, beautiful morning in North Carolina, and Sherry Pollex looks like shes ready to enjoy a carefree July day.

As she sits in a chair outside this Starbucks tucked into a small business park, Pollex appears to be the picture of health. Behind Pollex, people come and go from the coffee shop carrying iced drinks of various sizes and colors.

Pollex, wearing a vintage Willie Nelson T-shirt and shorts, blends into the summer scene perfectly. Except Pollex doesnt have a beverage in hand, because shes fasting for upcoming bloodwork to try and get some answers for why her cancer keeps coming back.

The longtime partner of 2017 NASCAR Cup Series champion Martin Truex Jr. works out regularly, does daily yoga and is one of the cleanest eaters youll ever meet.

And yet shes not well.

My doctors say all the time, We dont know what to do with you, because we dont have a patient like you, she says. Youve recovered three times. Youve been through this many drugs. For all intents and purposes, you look like a perfectly healthy person.

If I walked by on the street, youd have no idea I have cancer. But if you look at my scans, its very apparent I have cancer.

In some ways, this is nothing new for Pollex. She was diagnosed in 2014 with Stage 3 ovarian cancer and given a 30 percent chance of survival over the next five years.

She was 35 then. Shes 43 now and, at one time, was in remission for nearly three years. But now she finds herself in the thick of the battle again, ever since her cancer returned last year and has stubbornly stuck around in the time since.

Its very scary, especially when youre young, Pollex says. Im not ready to die.

She doesnt believe she will, by the way. Pollex has faith theres some treatment out there to help reverse the course of her disease; its just a matter of finding the right one. She says this with the confident eye contact of a person who is sure about what theyre saying.

But theres no doubt these last 10 months have been a bit worrisome.

Last September, doctors found Pollexs cancer had come back this time in her lung. That was a problem because she had just finished the latest round of chemotherapy a few months before and it meant her cancer was whats known as platinum-resistant, cancer that at first responds to drugs that contain platinum but then returns a short time later. Essentially, it narrowed the available pool of drugs doctors could try next.

So thats really not a good time, Pollex says.

With limited options, Pollex chose to try some holistic and alternative treatments, then underwent another scan last December. Unfortunately, it revealed the cancer had spread further.

So she went to Texas and tried a full-body hyperthermia treatment, which uses heat to destroy cancer cells and reduce tumor size, and started on a low-dose oral chemo to go with her integrative medicine.

Still, doctors saw even more disease progression. The conclusion: What theyve been doing isnt working, and its time to try something else.

Thats where Pollex is now: Awaiting the results of a recent biopsy that will be sent away for tumor testing to see if there are any drugs eligible for her type of cancer. She and her doctors will lay out all their cards and go from there.

And all options are on the table at this point. Pollex is even considering going overseas to Istanbul a doctor there has some outside-the-box treatments for ovarian cancer patients, she says.

Making matters more complicated: The cancer is mostly in her right lung now, but its starting to crawl across her diaphragm and is in some of her lymph nodes. But her diaphragm has already been resected twice and is already much smaller than a healthy persons would be (and is an essential part of breathing). So further surgery in that area isnt an option.

Pollex has a Type A personality and wants to tackle any challenge in front of her, with cancer certainly at the top of the list. So the waiting period has been hard, because she feels like she wants to do something but doctors have said they dont want to just throw various drugs at her and hope for the best.

The methodical and smart approach is to try and find something that works, but that can take a toll mentally.

Its heavy, because its not like youre just making a decision on your house or your car, she says. Its your life. What you decide needs to work. The pressure and the mental side of it is really hard.

If you follow Pollex on social media, reading this might come as somewhat of a surprise because she hasnt said much about her health recently. It tends to become a thing in the NASCAR world when she gives updates, she says, and the last thing she wants to do is become a distraction for Truex and his team. She doesnt want to see him constantly get asked about it at the track.

On the other hand, Pollex has found when she doesnt say anything for awhile and doesnt come to the races, people make assumptions about her health. She found it hurtful recently when people speculated on social media that Truex might retire due to her cancer.

I did not want my health to play into that decision at all, she says. I dont want anyone stopping their life because of what Im going through. I wanted Martin to think Im going to be healthy for the next 10 or 20 years which is what I believe.

If something happens to me, then thats life. But I wanted him to make the decision because of what he wanted to do.

Clearly, Truex wasnt sure for a while. He didnt love the Next Gen car at first and left it very much up in the air as to whether hed return to Joe Gibbs Racing in 2023 before announcing last month hed signed up for another year in the No. 19 car.

Pollex had sensed Truex wasnt happy and was going through the motions to a degree, so she urged him to do some soul-searching and figure out whether he still had the passion for racing.

As it turns out, he did.

You have to love it enough to want to do it for another year and want to be there, Pollex says of her counsel. Because if youre not happy, then just walk away. Just be done with it and go on and do something else in your life.

I think he made the right decision, regardless of what happens.

Thats the kind of perspective someone has when they look at life in an entirely different way. The reflection for Pollex is gained through lots of meditation and prayer while trying to keep herself calm, and she tries to spend time in nature, gardening and on the lake with her family.

While she awaits test results, doctors have told her to go enjoy your life and travel and do things she wants to do. But thats easier said than done; its not exactly a relaxing vacation when a person is lying poolside and can feel a tumor growing in their lung.

Thankfully, Pollex isnt in pain and has a good quality of life. But the tumor is big enough to constantly remind her theres something in her body.

The worst thing you can do is sit still by yourself and give yourself too much time to think about it, because then you just cant stop, she says. You go down that rabbit hole of, Well, what if this doesnt work? And that becomes so dangerous, because we dont know whether thats true or not. So to take those possibilities and run with them can get you in a lot of trouble. And I try not to do that. But its really hard.

Pollex doesnt sit around and feel sorry for herself that she has cancer, though she sometimes finds herself wishing she would have had a more popular cancer.

That might sound odd, but theres some reasons behind it. Theres been much more research and drugs developed to treat breast cancer and colon cancer, for example. But ovarian cancer treatments have barely changed in 30 years, she says. And the new drugs for ovarian cancer are not curative, but just create temporary remissions.

Thats why Ive become such an advocate for my disease, because it needs awareness and they need people to talk about it and nobody does, she says. If I can help somebody else behind me who is going to be diagnosed, then I need to do that. I need to take the chance to be that person.

Thats been a major purpose of the Martin Truex Jr. Foundation, which will hold its annual Catwalk for a Cause charity event on Sept. 14. The fashion show featuring NASCAR drivers walking with pediatric cancer patients raised more than $600,000 last year alone.

Catwalk has been around since 2010 and predates Pollexs own diagnosis. Shes often held up as an inspiration for both the Catwalk kids and other ovarian cancer patients, though she says thats been one of the most challenging aspects this time around.

I believe in what were doing with the foundation, but Ive had to step back from that a little bit because it was taking so much of my mental and emotional energy, and I need that to heal, she says. Its hard to give other people hope when youre on that search for it, too.

That said, Pollex has fully embraced her role as being both an ovarian cancer spokesperson and a pioneer for potential treatment options, since doctors say theres no textbook on her situation and shes determined to do whatever it takes to save my life.

I often wonder if thats my purpose here, she says. Its maybe not what I would have chosen for myself nobody really wants to be the poster child for any type of cancer but maybe Im supposed to go through all this so I can pave the way for other women.

On some days, that can be a really hard pill to swallow. But on other days, its like, You know, Ive been given this really important role in this life, and if Im going to leave a legacy behind and help other people, then I need to do it 100 percent.

(Top photo of Pollex in 2018: Chris Graythen / Getty Images)

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Sherry Pollex keeps the faith as she seeks answers on cancer treatment - The Athletic