Written by Alison Johnson
Near the summit of Russia’s highest mountain, a glacier-covered peak where the weather can turn from sun to hail in just a few hours, a team of exhausted climbers kept repeating five names one September morning: Austin, Emily, Justin, Sarah, Teddy. All five had a type of childhood cancer; one, Teddy Gerber of Connecticut, had died at age 9. The climb up Mount Elbrus was in honor of all of them, as a fundraiser for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, a charity that funds pediatric cancer research.
“Sarah” is Sarah Swaim of Virginia Beach, and she’d sent the climbers a keepsake to carry in their packs for inspiration: a stuffed panda she got just before a life-saving stem cell transplant. Now 23, Swaim has endured two bouts with biphenotypic leukemia and credits a new type of chemotherapy, developed partially with support from St. Baldrick’s, with giving her a chance to survive the transplant.
The Elbrus trip was the third expedition in a program called Climb for Five, which aims to raise awareness that one in five children diagnosed with cancer in the United States don’t survive. Climbers tackled Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro in 2010, Washington State’s Mount Rainier in 2011 and reached the top of the 18,510-foot Elbrus on Sept. 2. Future climbs may include adult survivors of childhood cancers.
Swaim, a junior at East Carolina University, was one of five Ambassador Kids selected nationwide for 2012. “St. Baldrick’s basically saved my life,” she says. “It is searching for treatments that are less harsh on the body, and that’s why I had some strength left going into the transplant. It took small things – individual people donating to St. Baldrick’s—to fund that research. People think they don’t have an impact, but obviously they do.”
The team of six climbers and two guides reflected on the Ambassador Kids throughout the 10-day journey up Elbrus, says Patrick McCarrick, founder of Climb for Five—when 70-mile-per-hour winds snapped a tent in two, when ice blasted their faces and during the last plodding steps to the summit. “We thought about what the kids go through,” McCarrick says. “They don’t complain. So yes, we’re cold and miserable, but we have our health. We can do this for them.”
Swaim was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia at age 14, after suffering severe bone pain initially diagnosed as a sports injury or rheumatoid arthritis. “It was surreal—I didn’t really get it,” she remembers. “I didn’t know what the word ‘oncology’ meant. So we’re sitting in the oncology waiting room and I’m suddenly like, ‘Wait, Mom, does this mean I have cancer?’”
After surviving three months of intensive chemotherapy at Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters, Swaim was cancer-free for seven years before relapsing. Complications from her 2010 stem cell transplant included seven compression fractures in her spine, digestive problems and relentless pain that forced her to leave school temporarily. Swaim is cancer-free today, with good odds of staying that way; she has lingering side effects such as some heart weakness, brittle bones, damaged sweat glands (she’s vulnerable to overheating) and likely fertility issues (she had eggs frozen before treatment).
Now considering a teaching career, Swaim loves spending time with her parents and sister, her boyfriend of four years and her Yorkshire terrier puppy, as well as singing, drinking Starbucks iced chai lattes and diving into the world of Harry Potter. “I’m so thankful for all the little things in life,” she says. “If I can help other kids by sharing my story, that’s an honor.”
For more information on the St. Baldrick’s Foundation or Climb for Five, visit stbaldricks.org and climbforfive.com.