Relay for Life to honor wife, mother who finds strength in family
By Anne Trautner
Staff Writer
Becky Greco is nervous about giving the opening speech for the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life at the Walworth County Fairgrounds this Friday.
“I’m not a public speaker, so I’m freaking out,” Greco said last week. “I went to McHenry Community College for a little while, and I would skip my speech class the day I was supposed to give a speech. It was terrible.”
But as someone who fought cancer twice and who received a stem-cell transplant, Greco has a story to share.
Greco, 39, was named the honorary survivor for Walworth County’s Relay for Life, an overnight celebration in which people take turns walking a track to raise funds to fight cancer. With different fun themes and games throughout the night, many families camp out on the grounds. At 10 p.m. a candlelight vigil will honor cancer survivors and caregivers, as well as remember those lost to cancer.
After Greco’s speech, she will take the first lap around the track at fairgrounds with her husband Tony, the event’s honorary caregiver, and their four sons, 16-year-old Zak, 13-year-old twins Aidan and Kaleb, and Eli, 11.
Becky is honored to have been chosen to lead the event, but does not care for the term “survivor.”
“I don’t really like the word survivor because I am surviving cancer,” Becky said. “It is something you always live with.”
Becky’s fight
In September 2009, Becky started having recurrent sinus infections. Doctors repeatedly put her on antibiotics.
When the infection moved to Becky’s throat, she was treated for strep throat.
After about three months, it was obvious that something was very wrong.
“All of a sudden, my neck just swelled up to the point where I almost looked like a linebacker. It was just huge, so they did a biopsy,” Becky said.
In January 2010, at the age of 35, Becky was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called NKTC Lymphoma.
Once she was diagnosed, Becky went through four rounds of chemotherapy at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee.
For each chemo treatment, Becky spent seven days in the hospital before being released. However, each time, she developed a fever and had to be hospitalized for about five more days, Tony said.
“We’d always call the hospital the condo,” Becky said. “Like, OK, I’m going to the condo, because I was there so much.”
After chemotherapy was finished, Becky went through what she considers the worst part of her treatment, seven weeks of radiation.
The radiation took its toll on Becky’s body, and she was unable to eat. She lost at least 50 pounds, and her 5-foot, 6-inch frame whittled away to just 100 pounds.
Finally, the cancer went into remission, and Becky began to feel better.
But in 2012, Becky began having sinus infections again. So she underwent sinus surgery, and a biopsy revealed that the cancer was back.
This time she went through just one round of chemotherapy in the hospital, and then using her own cells that were removed and frozen in 2010, Becky underwent a stem-cell transplant at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee.
With the stem cell transplant, Becky had to stay in the hospital for another 21 days. During that time, she was quarantined in her hospital room with its filtered air. Adults were allowed in the area, so Tony was able to visit. But children were not allowed in the room.
When her four children came to the hospital to visit, Becky was permitted to put on a mask and gown and walk out of her room to see them.
“It just got hard for them to always come up and go back and forth. Tony used to stay with me if I needed him. That was the hardest, being there for 21 days,” Becky said.
On April 23, 2012, Becky’s immune system rebounded from the transplant and she was released from the hospital. It was the first day of her new life without cancer.
“I’m 2 years old, that’s what we call it – happy birthday. I get my birthday and then I get the stem-cell birthday,” Becky said.
Care
Becky said she had a great support system, starting with Tony, who was always at Becky’s side during doctors’ appointments to keep track of what was going on with her treatment.
“He’d be there to listen, thank God. He was always there,” Becky said.
While staying with Becky in the hospital, Tony, who works as a general superintendent for Michels Corporation, was able to do his work through the phone or computer.
In addition, Becky said her children, friends and the community helped her get through everything.
“I was very lucky,” Becky said.
Once Becky was diagnosed, she resigned from her position as a teacher’s aide at the Walworth Grade School.
“We call cancer a fulltime job because really it is. You have no time for anything else but to fight and to go through that,” Becky said.
Still, the school put on a benefit for her. In addition, friends conducted different fundraising efforts and brought meals to the family throughout the ordeal.
And friends were always there to talk to when she wanted, Becky said.
“I had one friend who would call and say, ‘How are you?’ and if I said, ‘Fine,’ she knew, that I wasn’t fine, but that was my mechanism to say I don’t want to talk about it,” Becky said.
The Greco family moved from Harvard, Ill., to the Village of Walworth in 2006.
“It was probably the best thing we did for something like that to happen,” Tony said. “We’ve had good friends in the town. We would call them at 10, 11, 12 o’clock at night, and in five minutes they were at the house.”
In addition, the Grecos are grateful for all of the doctors who have helped them over the past four years.
Moving forward
Cancer was not anything new to the Greco family.
Becky’s mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 2009.
Both of Tony’s parents lost their lives to cancer, as did his brother-in-law and both of Becky’s grandfathers.
“That’s hard on me. I think, gosh, how did I get through so well, and they didn’t,” Becky said.
In May, Becky suffered another sinus infection but is now is feeling good.
But cancer is always in the back of everyone’s mind.
“There is always that little fear that they are going to tell you something’s wrong. That’s part of life now,” Becky said
Eli, the youngest Greco child, thinks of life in terms of before his mom had cancer and after she had it.
To help their children cope, Becky and Tony have told the boys what was happening throughout Becky’s treatment.
“We never hid anything from them,” Becky said. “We never left them out. We never lied to them.”
The boys came to some of Becky’s medical appointments.
They even took turns shaving their mother’s hair the second time she went through chemotherapy.
Dealing with cancer has changed everyone in the family, Tony acknowledged.
“I think we look at things a little differently,” Tony said. “We still go about our lives the way we always have, but we now have a different respect for people going through stuff like this.”
Becky said she is a different person now.
“I have changed so much. I don’t know if it’s good or if it’s bad. But I’m different, in general,” Becky said. “I appreciate things more and think of things a little bit brighter, I guess.”
