Jamie Talbert

[35TangoTango]

More on the subject of one of Coach Coale's Diary Entries (http://www.normantranscript.com/localnews/local_story_359005018?keyword=secondarystory)

[BearLady]

Thanks for sharing this update on Jamie. It's great to hear that things have gone well so far, and we'll hope and pray that that trend continues. Jamie can be inspiring to many people!

[Gator]

The news about Jamie is a GREAT Christmas present - thanks!

[catfan28]

Very Nice News to hear during the holiday season.

Keep the fight Jamie. :)

[YCN]

It's fantastically interesting to see how Jamie approached her cancer, and her vigor in the face of her chemotherapy.

Given that she has taken the most aggressive course of action against it, the prognosis sounds extremely good. And we will all be living in a better world for this good news.

Jamie is a special young lady.

[hoops4her]

We spotted Jamie in the sideline seats at the Michigan State game, along with Lauren Shoush, Stephanie Luce, Steph Simon, Desiree Taylor, and a few more former players. It was great seeing her there, as always, a very supportive alum. Best of luck to her!

[BearLady]

There's a great article about Jamie, her fight and her courage in today's Dallas paper. The article also talks about Coach Coale's feelings as she learned about Jamie and wrote about the battle in her diary.

While much of the information in the article has been previously shared elsewhere, I'm glad to see the word about Jamie and her battle spread to a little wider audience. In fact the article begins on p1 of the Sports Day section and is written by one of the feature columnists for The Morning News. It also has a nice picture of Jamie and Coach Coale.

There are lots of OU alums and fans here in this area, so I know they will appreciate seeing a heart-warming article on such a wonderful young person. But it won't be confined to just the OU throngs! :)

Go Jamie!

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/columnists/ksherrington/stories/122905dnsposherrington.17140591.html

[Jennifer]

Here's a video link from Friday regarding Jamie and her fight with ovarian cancer.

http://www.channeloklahoma.com/video/8239730/index.html

[Jennifer]

Jamie ran in the OKC Memorial Marathon today.

Cancer doesn’t curb Wyrick’s enthusiasm for her marathon run

By Jenni Carlson
The Oklahoman

Jamie Wyrick never quite understood why anyone would want to run a marathon.
Marathon field wide open

She is running one today - the sixth annual Memorial Marathon will be her first - and she still struggles to make sense of it.

“It’s just so strange to think I’m going to run 26 miles,“ she said. “My whole life, I’ve never been a runner.

“I hated running.”

Even when she transferred to Oklahoma to play basketball and joined up with a bunch that would make the program’s only Final Four appearance, she loathed the conditioning. Known then by her maiden name, Talbert, Jamie dreaded the preseason five-mile run.

Now?

“Five miles?“ she said. “I could do that every day.”

She smiled.

“It just proves if you set your mind to something, your body’s capable.”

Profound words from someone who knows. Last summer, Wyrick discovered she had ovarian cancer. Only 25 years old, she’d been married less than a year to former OU baseball player Patrick Wyrick. She was in physical therapy school. She was planning and dreaming and moving.

She had no time for cancer.

Wyrick made herself a promise. She vowed that her life would remain the same even through surgery and chemotherapy. She would go to school. She would hang with friends. She would enjoy married life.

She would run the Memorial Marathon, too. That had been the plan for a year.

Why let cancer change that?

“I pretty much kept up my normal way of life,” Wyrick said. “I just went with it.”

Life rearranged, not life interrupted.

“Still to this day, I don’t think of myself as someone who has had cancer,” she said. “I never felt sick.”

Late last spring, though, Wyrick noticed something odd between her bellybutton and hip bone. She could feel a hard mass right beneath her skin. Pull the skin tight, and it even protruded a bit.

She passed it off for a while. Feeling no serious pain, only discomfort, she figured she could handle it. Only after prodding from her husband and her mother did Wyrick see a doctor.

What he saw was shocking. Wyrick had a tumor so big that it entirely obscured her left ovary.

It weighed five pounds.

“It was probably the most shocking news I’ve ever had,” Wyrick said, “but ... the time not knowing was the worst.”

Doctors determined Wyrick had a benign germ-filled tumor, which are most often found in females 12 to 25. This form of ovarian cancer is different than the more common one found in post-menopausal women, and if detected and treated in its early stages, the prognosis is good.

The cure rate: 99 percent.

“I was upset,” Wyrick said, “but I wasn’t too devastated because I knew the prognosis was good.”

Then right before surgery in July, blood tests came back with unexpected results. Her tumor was malignant.

Her oncologist recommended chemotherapy as a precaution, not a necessity. The cancer hadn’t spread, so they’d be able to remove all of it during surgery. Chemotherapy, though, would reduce the chance of the cancer coming back to less than 1 percent.

Wyrick wanted to be sure. She researched it, scouring the Internet for information, googling anything and everything she thought might help.

Then she asked her doctor questions.

Tons of them.

“I’m that patient,” she said.

After meeting three times with her oncologist, Wyrick decided to do the chemo. With that decision came her promise.

“This is going to be hard,” she told herself. “This is going to be a challenge, but you’re just going to have to keep going.”

Chemo started in August, about the same time classes did. Wyrick went for treatment five days a week. Six hours a day. Then she’d go two or three weeks off the chemo.

She missed about 20 days of school, but her professors excused her absences and allowed her to rearrange her exam schedule. She would be sick for a few days after a round of chemo. Otherwise, she felt good, so good sometimes that she would want to go for a walk when she got home from the hospital.

“I was honestly having to rein her in,” husband Patrick said. “ ‘Honey, don’t you think you should be resting?’ ”

He chuckled.

“She’s such a strong person. She didn’t want anybody to think something was wrong.”

During one of their walks, Jamie and Patrick encountered one of her classmates. She still had her IV in her arm, heavily taped and left there throughout the week of chemo.

“I don’t want her to see my arm,” Jamie told Patrick.

A private person who was quite comfortable during her OU career being a role player on that included Stacey Dales, LaNeishea Caufield and Caton Hill, Wyrick wanted the same anonymity as a cancer patient. She sought no attention. She wanted no hubbub.

“She didn’t want to become Jamie, the girl with cancer,” Patrick said. “She just wanted to be Jamie.”

That’s why she worried about losing her hair. It would be a tell.

She shopped for a wig but struggled to find one that looked natural.

That’s when former teammate Stephanie Simon hatched an idea. She knew about a wig maker in Dallas who specialized in custom-made wigs. Made of human hair, not synthetic, it would be molded to fit only Wyrick.

The cost: $1,500.

A law school classmate of Patrick, Simon didn’t have that kind of money and knew the Wyricks wouldn’t either. She started calling her former teammates.

“It was amazing,” Simon said. “All you had to do was mention it.”

The alums decided include this year’s squad, too, even though only a couple players knew Jamie. Yet every last one of them pitched in, offering their per diems for the fund.

“It wasn’t something like, ‘Oh, yeah let’s do this,’ ” OU guard Erin Higgins said. “It was, ‘We have to do this.’ ”

Sooners coach Sherri Coale said, “That’s what’s incredibly unique and special about the bonds that are formed through athletics. They’re fighting with her against this. It’s just like they’re on the floor, fighting against an opponent.”

And in late November after three rounds of chemo, doctors deemed the battle won. Wyrick was cleared.

Soon after, she and best friend Kate Mohrmann began training for the marathon.

They roomed together their freshman year at Seward County Community College in Kansas. Early on, they talked about running a marathon some day.

A year ago, they ran eight-mile legs of a relay, but all the while, they schemed for this year.

“We have to run the whole thing,” they vowed.

They found a 16-week training plan on the internet. Before starting, though, they needed to be able to run either 25 to 30 miles a week or six miles at once comfortably.

Three weeks before Wyrick and Mohrmann planned to start the program, they went on a run. It was a struggle for Jamie. Her breathing was labored, her conditioning zapped.

“This has to be like three miles,” she proclaimed after a bit.

They drove it later. It was barely a mile.

Wyrick stuck with it, even when running a couple miles made her sick. Less than a month later, she was ready to begin the marathon training.

“To be honest, I was like, ‘I don’t know if you should be doing this right away,’ ” husband Patrick said. “I never would have expected her doing it this soon. It obviously makes it a lot greater achievement because she’s doing it so quickly after what happened, but she doesn’t want it to be about the fact that she had cancer.”

Make no mistake, there have been worries and hurdles during the past four months. Twisted ankles. Injured feet. None of the problems have ever been related to Wyrick’s cancer.

She battled post players as an undersized center at OU and helped the Sooners to the national championship game. She fought ovarian cancer at the age of 25 and never missed a beat.

Now, she’s ready to take on the Memorial Marathon.

“I don’t think the marathon is a huge accomplishment because I had cancer,” Wyrick said.

Eyes wide on a face now framed by a pixie-short hair, a smile played at the corners of her mouth.

“The marathon’s a huge accomplishment because who wants to run 26.2 miles?”

Jenni Carlson: 475-4125, jcarlson@oklahoman.com

[NewBearFan2002]

Way to go Jamie. A friend of mine just biked a 150 mile race. I am absolutely amazed at what these women have done. It is something I am fascinated by, but I cannot seem to find that gear in myself.