Patients Trying to Stop Cancer in Their Tracks : 5-kilometer ‘move-along-a-thon’ is a chance for survivors to take a poke at the disease.

How do you survive cancer? You face it down and spit in its eye.

That, metaphorically at least, is what Mary Ann Maring of Huntington Beach has been doing for the last six years. Since her mastectomy and a grinding year of chemotherapy, Maring has done her best to leave cancer in her dust. She has learned to ski, to raft down white-water rapids and she has hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. And now, she says, she is planning to climb Mt. Whitney.

So where else would Maring be early Saturday morning but out on the road around Newport Beach’s Back Bay, participating in a 5-kilometer “move-along-a-thon” sponsored by the Orange County unit of the American Cancer Society?

For Maring and nearly 50 other local cancer survivors, the run/walk/skating fund-raising event, billed as Making Strides Against Cancer, was one more chance to take a straight poke at the disease that at some point in their lives had jolted them with bolts of fear, uncertainty and pain.

Wearing bright pink caps to distinguish them from the nearly 1,000 other participants, the survivors were the stars of the show, cheerful, laughing, energetic. It is this positive attitude--robust affirmation of life in the face of possible death--that is one of the strongest weapons against cancer, said the survivors.

“I went through a whole myriad of emotions after I was diagnosed, from anger to devastation and everything in between,” said 40-year-old Sher Lyckman, a commercial insurance broker from Costa Mesa who suffered breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy two years ago. But, she said, she developed “a strong belief that a positive attitude was where it’s at, that it’s something that comes from within. I never believed I wouldn’t survive.”

The common recovery strategy of positive thinking “is something we hear a lot,” said Teresa Riss, a spokesperson for the Orange County unit of the ACS. “Every patient is different, but there are several studies that show that positive thinking and support groups really help in rehabilitation. We encourage the patients to find out as much as they can about their treatment and ask their doctor questions and become involved in their treatment.”

To that end, she said, the ACS offers not only published resources that explain the most current treatments for particular cancers, but a computer program called Cancer Response System, which constantly updates information on several kinds of cancers and current research and treatment for each. All are available to cancer patients and their families.

For the Del Valle family of Tustin, support took still another form: a run by proxy. While 14-year-old Sissi Del Valle was in the hospital undergoing chemotherapy for a cancer that was diagnosed in her knee last July, her father, Cesar, was running in the ACS event.

“The reactions among members of the family to her diagnosis were all different,” he said, “but we all give our total support to her. It’s an opportunity to face reality with the whole family. We all pray together. And she gets tremendous support from her teachers and classmates.”

Still, said Del Valle, the battle may have been most truly joined by Sissi herself.

“The first reaction is, ‘Why me?’ ” he said, “but now she feels like a winner. She is the one who really keeps up the spirit all the time. She has to wear a wig because of the chemotherapy, but she doesn’t feel different. She feels like a normal person. She just graduated from junior high and she attended all the celebrations.”

How survivable is cancer? The odds keep improving. In the early part of this century, few cancer sufferers had any hope of long-term survival. According to American Cancer Society statistics, in the 1930s less than one in five was alive at least five years after treatment. In the 1940s, it was one in four, and in the 1960s, one in three. Today, about 452,000 Americans, or four of 10 patients who get cancer this year, will be alive five years after diagnosis.

Fran Larrison, 42, of Orange, has managed to emerge on the credit side of that grim ledger. Shortly before her daughter was born 11 years ago, she was diagnosed with acute cervical cancer. Buoyant after walking the 5-kilometer course, she recalled her initial ignorance about her disease, and how knowledge became power.

“I had no knowledge, no education about cancer at the time,” she said. “I was scared to death. I had no idea of how severe it was, of whether it was terminal. And I was afraid to say anything to anybody. I was afraid I’d be ostracized.”

Surgery and chemotherapy saved her. Along with help from friends.

“I just opened up and asked for help,” said Larrison. “As I was educated more, I understood that there were answers. I stopped being in a state of denial.

“There’s a certain fear in the back of my mind that it’s not done yet, but I’m really not afraid now. I know how good the technology is, and I know there’s help.”

And there are rivers to be rafted and mountains to be climbed. Which, say the survivors, may be the ultimate lesson they learn.

“It gave me a whole new perspective on life,” said Lyckman, who ran the course on Saturday and finished second among the participating cancer survivors. “And even though I had a mastectomy, I never felt that I had lost anything of me. You learn that every day is a gift.”

Her fight with cancer “made me put my priorities in line,” said Maring. “You learn not to wait for things. I know there’s hope for survival and I’m not waiting for ‘someday’ any more.”