Martin Truex Jr. detailed his girlfriend Sherry Pollex’s 17-month fight with ovarian cancer in a raw and emotional piece posted Monday on The Players’ Tribune.
Pollex announced Jan. 11 she had completed her final chemotherapy treatment.
Among the specifics revealed in the story was the fact that Furniture Row Racing owner Barney Visser offered to let Truex sit out the remainder of the 2014 season after Pollex was diagnosed with Stage 3 ovarian cancer on Aug. 7, 2014.
“But Sherry and I never considered it,” Truex wrote. “We both needed to get back to our normal. And normal for us is racing.”
Truex wrote about first meeting Pollex more than 10 years ago, and how “being with her was one of those things where you were all-in right from the start. You never really questioned it, you never really thought about it. You just did it because it felt right.”
Pollex first began experiencing abdomen pain in April 2014, Truex wrote, but because ovarian cancer often is difficult to diagnose, she did not have a CT scan until August. The following week, Pollex had surgery.
Wrote Truex: “The surgery was performed on August 15, just a short week after we first heard those words. We arrived at the hospital at 5:30 a.m., and Sherry was prepped for what we thought was going to be a four-hour procedure. Instead, after seven hours of surgery, which included a radical hysterectomy and the removal of tumors all the way up to her spleen and appendix, the doctor was finally confident that he had removed all “visible” signs of cancer. It was only four months from the time Sherry had initially told me she was having abdominal pain, and the cancer had literally spread everywhere.”
Worse than the surgery was the chemotherapy that followed, Truex wrote.
“Watching Sherry go through the grueling eight-hour chemotherapy sessions every couple of weeks for six months was almost unbearable. She lost her hair and lost 27 pounds from her healthy weight of 120 pounds. She could barely walk from the living room to the kitchen in our home. It was one of the darkest times in our lives.”
Truex has expanded his Martin Truex Jr. Foundation to focus on both pediatric and ovarian cancer since Pollex’s diagnosis.
You can read the full story here