Local sprint car driver races to help find a cure

Photo courtesy of Virginia Motor Speedway Mary Anne Williams slides through a Virginia Motor Speedway corner in her Sprint car.

Stock car racing and cancer have some things in common. Both can knock you down, but you just have to take a deep breath, pick yourself up, dust off and rejoin the fray. Both can also offer the opportunity to be a winner. With cancer, survival is the best revenge. And bringing your car back for another round of competition after an unexpected mechanical failure or crash incident is good for the racer's soul.

No one knows these lessons better than Mary Anne Williams, a top-flight Winged Sprint Car driver, who has taken the Susan G. Komen Foundation's motto, "race for the cure," to a whole new meaning.

The 47-year-old Pennsylvania native and University of Pittsburgh grad resides in Chesterfield County. She and her husband, Mike, have a son, Nicholas, and have had solid roots in this area since 1987. She has a good career at Dupont, and Mike has the same at Cogentrix.

Williams has been racing since 1991, and now wheels her sprint car at Virginia Motor Speedway (VMS) in Jamaica, Va. near Saluda. Her ride is similar to the famous World of Outlaws racecars. Looks-wise, it's a near carbon copy; it just has less horsepower.

Jerry Reid/Chesterfield Observer Breast cancer survivor Mary Anne Williams of Chester takes a breather after completing the recent Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.

Williams is one of the drivers to beat. She's had wins, including a recent one, and also big losses, like her legendary crash at Winchester (Va.) Speedway, when her car landed in a tree outside the track. She was back behind the wheel again soon after that thrilling and scary flight.

Williams, of all people, expects the occasional tumble in racing. Life is the same way. Just like in a race, the unexpected happened to Williams: a diagnosis of breast cancer.

"I was actually diagnosed in November of 2007… quite a shock, not something I was expecting at all. I really had none of the risk factors. It doesn't run in my family. Some of the risk factors are being overweight, or smoking, poor diet, lack of exercise, that kind of thing, and I had none of those."

"So it was quite a shock and right out of the blue. You could say, why me? But there's a good chance for every woman… one in eight; that's pretty significant," she recalled.

"The word cancer definitely knocks the breath out of you, no doubt about it… But within a couple of weeks, I went to see a surgeon. I actually had surgery the week before Christmas. And at that point, you still don't know what you're facing. I had surgery to remove the tumor, and had some lymph nodes removed from the armpit," she recalled

And then came the wait for findings. "Luckily, they found out my cancer had not spread to the lymph nodes, which meant it hadn't metastasized anywhere else," she recalled.

While planning a course of treatment, Williams was the beneficiary of a breakthrough diagnostic tool that helps doctors avoid unnecessary options and their attendant side effects.

"They did a gene test on me. It looks at 23 different genes, and it can actually tell if you're somebody who will benefit from chemotherapy, or not. In the past, they didn't know. They sort of recommended chemotherapy for everyone, but for some people it just did not work," Williams related.

"It identified me as someone, based on my genes and some other factors, who wouldn't get much benefit from chemotherapy. So, I just had the lumpectomy and radiation," she said.

Her survival prognosis is now "very good. They give you survival rates, your five-year survival rate. I'm over 90 percent, which is about the best you can hear," related Williams.

"So, I consider myself a survivor now and will just be doing more frequent monitoring than I have," she concluded.

Williams recently ran the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Richmond, and she fully supports the organization's advocacy for research, education and early detection.

And her praise is boundless for the American Cancer Society (ACS). Williams said that the 24-hour call line at the ACS is just amazing with the help they can offer, of all types, to all cancer patients.

With her surgery and treatment behind her, Williams will now use her rolling billboard racecar and her celebrity to bring awareness to breast cancer.

"Early detection is the best prevention. Hopefully through my racing and through this article we can get this message out. It's very important for all women to be doing their monthly breast self-exams. That's actually how I found my tumor."

"It's also important for all women to get yearly clinical exams, and when you pass 40, you should get your baseline mammogram and then get one every year," she continued.

"[For] people facing diagnosis, it's definitely not a death sentence anymore. There have been so many advances…when they get that diagnosis, people should have hope," she said.

Williams completed her radiation treatments on St. Patrick's Day. Racing was under way, and she said she had lost some strength and endurance, but is regaining it steadily. Aside from naps in the race trailer at VMS, she related that she hasn't had too much diffi culty.

She offered some final, helpful thoughts on dealing with cancer. "Find a doctor you can trust; get as much information as you can. You're not alone; talk to other women who've been through it. Although it seems devastating, one thing I kept telling myself was at least it's not 20 or 30 years ago," she advised. "If you're going to have it, now's the time to have it."