Susanne Jorgensen stands triumphantly at the summit of Mount Shasta
in California after taking part in the 2015 Climb Against the Odds.
Photo provided
By Lona O'Connor
Nobody would have faulted Susanne Jorgensen if she had decided to snorkel and walk the beach near her home. She had just finished a grueling year that began with a diagnosis of breast cancer, then surgery, then chemotherapy.
Instead, she decided to climb 14,000-foot Mount Shasta in California, a fundraiser for the Breast Cancer Fund.
She found the Breast Cancer Fund during an Internet search for information on cancer-causing substances in the environment. The fund focuses on prevention, including research on environmental toxins.
“It was 3 in the morning and I said, ‘I have to do this climb for them,’ ” said Jorgensen. She had just taken her last treatment.
Breast Cancer Fund founder Andrea Ravinett Martin, a two-time cancer survivor, organized the first Climb Against the Odds in 1995. Sheila Brown, director of development for the fund, said, “It’s meant to draw people who want to take on a big challenge, survivors or people climbing for a survivor.”
The other members of the 2015 climbing team had been training for three months when Jorgensen signed on in March for the June climb.
“I had just had my chemo port taken out,” said Jorgensen, 57, who lives in Ocean Ridge. She developed a hematoma in the area around the port. She had never climbed a mountain before, and she was the only one training at sea level.
“I remember thinking, ‘Susanne is probably not going to make it,’ ” said Brown. “But she is incredibly determined.”
Jorgensen, 57, concurs with Martin’s philosophy that you get through cancer, mountain climbs and all the other challenges of life just by putting one foot in front of the other.
“Then, when the medical treatment is finished, you say, ‘What the heck happened?’ ” said Jorgensen.
Trained in Britain as a psychologist, she makes her living coaching cancer survivors and others recovering from trauma. She estimates that it takes six or seven months just to assimilate the emotional trauma of cancer treatment.
“You were in survivor mode. Then, suddenly, the magnitude of it hits you.”
She worked out only her lower body for a couple of weeks, until the hematoma healed. Then she began intensive full-body workouts with a trainer.
She also practiced a power breathing technique with her yoga teacher, to help her combat shortness of breath in the mountain’s thin air.
Jorgensen pledged $6,000, some of which she is still raising through an online auction. She spent $2,000 to $3,000 more for travel, equipment and other expenses.
Inside their 40-pound packs, each team member carried brightly colored Tibetan prayer flags with the name of a person for whom they were climbing.
They started at 2 a.m., the stars above them, and only their headlamps illuminating the blue-black snow. The climb lasted three days. The last day, they were on the move for 14 hours, climbing down after the summit. The last few hours getting to the peak, she said, were very much like cancer treatment: one step at a time, focusing on nothing else.
Then she looked up. There was the summit.
The climbers unfurled their prayer flags. Jorgensen burst into tears. After such an accomplishment, Jorgensen could be forgiven for resting on her laurels. But no, she is already thinking about putting together a team for next year’s Climb Against the Odds.
Lona O’Connor has a lifelong interest in health and healthy living. Send column ideas to Lona13@bellsouth.net.
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