More than $20,000 has been raised for multiple myeloma at a walk organized by a Moncton councillor who is sharing his own experience with battling the disease.
Shawn Crossman has always liked to keep busy, whether playing hockey several times a week, or biking and golfing during the summer months, but his active, healthy lifestyle came to a sudden stop on July 1, 2018.
After suffering through intense back pain for almost two months, the city councillor decided it was time to seek medical help.
“They had told me my kidneys had failed, they told me from the X-rays that I had gone through that evening that my T-11 in my back was crushed, so it had actually dropped about 3.5 centimetres,” recalls Crossman.
At the age of 46, multiple tests and X-rays confirmed his worst fear; he had multiple myeloma – a rare form of blood cancer.
“Honestly, when someone tells you, you have cancer and your kidneys are failing and your back is broken yeah, you’re scared. You’re extremely scared.”
Crossman underwent 16 weeks of intense chemotherapy and a stem-cell transplant, but says he refused to let cancer beat him down.
“At that point I just sat back and I just said, ‘Let’s do this.’ I prepared myself mentally and every day I did not give cancer more than five minutes a day in my mind,” he says.
This past July, about a year after his diagnosis, Crossman received the news he had been waiting for -- he had won his battle with cancer, which was now in remission.
Wanting to help others beat the disease, the cancer survivor organized a march to raise awareness about multiple myeloma -- the first of its kind in Moncton.
The Multiple Myeloma March happened Saturday at the Crossman Community Centre -- a building named after his late father, Norm Crossman, who was also a cancer survivor.
“To know that he had cancer and to know that he beat it, and I walked him through it, to host this, it means something to both of us,” says Crossman.
Crossman says more than $23,000 was raised at Saturday’s event. He is already starting to plan the 2nd annual Multiple Myeloma March, slated for September 2020.
