Couple Now Has Personal Stake in Fighting Disease

By Kerstin Marthaler

Oleg Nodelman and his wife Heather, both 26, signed up like hundreds of others to train for a triathlon with the popular Team In Training (TNT), an endurance sport and fundraising program for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. But after eight weeks of training, and one month before his Lake San Antonio Wildflower triathlon in May, Oleg made a doctor's appointment for himself.

Nodelman had been swimming regularly with TNT at San Francisco's Aquatic Park, where locals and tourists often see swimmers preparing for races by doing laps around buoys in water that averages 55 degrees. Like most of the TNT participants, Nodelman wore a full wetsuit - but his was leaving painful burns on the side of his neck, where he thought he felt an inflamed lymph node. He made an appointment with his doctor, and an MRI and biopsy revealed that he had a large lump on one side of his neck and a host of smaller ones forming on the left side. Oleg was told that he had Burkitt's Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, one of the most aggressive forms of cancer.

The Nodelmans have lived in Presidio Heights for four years. They met at the 1996 Olympics, working as translators for Olympic broadcasters. After finishing college in Washington, D.C., they moved to San Francisco where Oleg could pursue management consulting. His current job as a research analyst, performing due diligence on potential biotech investments for the Biotechnology Value Fund, prepared him to know what questions to ask doctors for his treatment. When his doctor hesitated to share his test results before confirming the diagnosis, Nodelman had a doctor friend in San Diego call to see the results. His friend told him, "Oleg, I'm not going to beat around the bush. You have tumors on both sides of your neck and they look malignant. They look like some form of lymphoma."

Nodelman immediately scheduled an appointment with an oncologist at Stanford Hospital. The doctor told him that he needed to begin three months of chemotherapy treatments. By the time Nodelman finished his last round, he and Heather would refer to Stanford Hospital as their "time share," and to his malignant tumor as "Jerry the Tumor."

Nodelman waited until confirmation from the Stanford specialist before telling his family about his diagnosis. During that time, Heather still had a triathlon to complete. After some soul-searching, the couple decided the only thing to do was to drive to Wildflower as planned with Team In Training, where she would complete the event. At a pasta dinner the night before the race, Nodelman got up and told 400 athletes who had raised more than $3,000 each for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society that he himself now had cancer.

"At first, it was a shocker. It was like looking in on someone else's life from the outside. After the Friday night when I spoke at the TNT dinner, I accepted it. I was very emotional, but after finally admitting in public that I had cancer, it made it real. The only right thing to do was to go to Wildflower," Nodelman said.

Nodelman was told by doctors not to participate in the race since he needed to save his strength for chemotherapy. While Heather swam and rode her bike, he cheered her on, and for the final leg of the race, he ran six miles alongside her. He also cheered on the 400 athletes who were racing, knowing that they were racing for him, too.

Nodelman described what it was like to go from raising money for others to knowing that he now needed the organization:

"One of the things they say when you get diagnosed is to join a support group. I guess I felt like I was already in a support group, through Team In Training. I felt more grateful to everyone who had contributed when I fundraised during my training. They had contributed out of the goodness of their hearts, without even having a connection to leukemia or lymphoma. That is really amazing."

Now Nodelman is part of the larger connection. He is a Patient Honoree for the summer TNT season and a new team of athletes are fundraising and competing in the Pacific Grove and Big Kahuna triathlons on Sept. 7 and 13. The good news, Nodelman reports, is that his chemotherapy was successful and Jerry the Tumor is now gone.

"Heather and I will both be doing Wildflower next year," Nodelman says.

For more information on Team in Training, go to www.teamintraining.com or call 1-800-78-TRAIN.