The Lunardi clan shifts into high gear for the Ride to Conquer Cancer. Sarah Harris wheels along to find out more.
The children Lunardi was warned she might never be able to have – Xander, almost 4, and Oskar, 22 months – are her own best evidence and motivation for the Ride to Conquer Cancer.
She was 15 when she was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma – a form of cancer that typically afflicts teenagers and is often misdiagnosed as “growing pains” or a sports injury because of the gradual onset that may begin in soft tissue or bone.
Lunardi, too, initially believed her persistent sore back was down to dancing classes five nights a week.
It was when she was doing work experience at a kindergarten near her Werribee home that the disease really made itself known.
“I was bending over to talk to the little kids and my back just kept cramping,” she says of that frightening day 15 years ago. “It got to the point I could hardly breathe. I went home, which was just around the corner from the kinder and just lay on the floor. I could not move – I was in so much pain.”
A CT scan revealed what appeared to be an abscess but – as the subsequent biopsy revealed – was far more sinister.
“It all happened very, very, very quickly,” Lunardi says. “Within two or three weeks I went from dancing to being a cancer patient.”
Early on Lunardi was encouraged to have some of her ovarian tissue frozen because there was a real risk the months of chemotherapy and six weeks of radiation treatment would destroy her fertility.
“It was a little bit surreal as a 15-year-old to have to think so far into the future,” she says.
“Even going through my treatment the severity of it didn’t dawn on me. I think it was part of my coping mechanism that I just did what I had to do, day in and day out, just to get by to survive. I think it was one or two years later that it kind of hit me how critical it was.”
By then Lunardi had graduated from being a cancer patient to a survivor.
But many of the friends she made through CanTeen – the support group for young people with cancer – did not.
“Through CanTeen we made a lot of friends and we lost a lot of friends,” she says. “There was a point in the early 2000s that I was going to more funerals each year than birthdays.”
The disease continues to take its toll on her family, claiming the life of Lunardi’s paternal grandmother in 2007, while on her mother’s side her Aunty Lee is battling Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“That’s the thing about cancer – it’s just not fair,” Lunardi says. “I think that’s why it is so important that everybody gets behind the fight, because it really does affect everybody whatever their age, race or socio-economic standing.”
For Lunardi, that means getting back on her bike and joining her younger siblings and Aunty Michelle for the Ride to Conquer Cancer.
“I thought, if they can do it, I’ll have a crack. Before we started training I hadn’t been on a bike since I was, like, 15 and couldn’t do more than three kilometres – a few minor details,” she says with a laugh. “But now I feel good. I’ll do all 200 kilometres from Melbourne to Mornington and back for sure.”
Her youngest brother, Nicko, can attest to the transformative power of the ride.
“I was a bit of a stuff-up before the ride last year,” he says. “I was a bit down with myself and unhappy at where I was in my life.
“But I got such a positive response from everyone around me getting together and helping me out, it put a bit of faith and confidence back into me. My training was like Forrest Gump training. It was just ride, ride, ride and ride some more. I had a really bad bike and did the whole thing in skinny jeans, but when I finished I had never felt better about myself.”
So much so that this year he’s signed up to the Vision Crusaders, a national team of 26 riders and four crew who will tackle all five Australian rides and a sixth in New Zealand – a staggering total of 1200 kilometres over six weekends.
And the big difference isn’t just the extra distance he’s prepared to go.
This time he’ll be wearing Lycra.
The first Ride to Conquer Cancer is in Queensland on August 16-17. The Victorian Ride to Conquer Cancer takes place on October 26-27. To register or donate, go to conquercancer.org.au/
To sponsor the Vision Crusaders Grand Slam, go to http://letsendcancer.com/
