Article Published: Saturday, December 31, 2005

Fairbanks Daily News Miner

Butcher focuses on the positive

By R.A. DILLON, Staff Writer

Defeat is not a word Susan Butcher is willing to consider.

The four-time Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race champion and mother of two was diagnosed Dec. 2 with acute myelogenous leukemia, a potentially fatal disease that attacks the blood and bone marrow.

She's been undergoing chemotherapy in a Seattle hospital since her diagnosis. Doctors have advised her that she'll need a bone marrow transplant to beat the disease, but Butcher has remained undaunted by the prognosis.

Instead, the lifelong athlete has turned her renowned powers of focus to the positive, like being able to put in a minute and 37 seconds on the elliptical trainer in her hospital room despite the exhaustion caused by her treatment.

"It's important for me to feel that ... I gave it my best every day," she said Thursday from her isolation room at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

To win her fight with cancer, the retired musher says she'll need to maintain her strength.

"Being an athlete is important," she said. "It's what keeps me whole and sane."

Butcher, who turned 51 the day after Christmas, passed a major checkpoint on the trail to recovery Friday.

Doctors have put her through three weeks of intense chemotherapy to kill off her white blood cells in preparation for a bone marrow transplant. The chemo, which also temporarily destroys the immune system, has left her susceptible to infection and caused her trademark long, straight chestnut hair to fall out.

"You don't feel good at all when you don't have any blood cells," she said.

So far, though, the treatment has been successful.

Friday's blood test showed that the chemo has been successful in forcing the disease into remission--if only temporarily. If her doctors give their approval, Butcher will be able to rest for a month outside of the hospital before having to endure another round of chemo.

"The desire is to be cleared to go back to Alaska for a month," said husband Dave Monson.

Hardest race

For all of her struggles as a long-distance musher, the first phase of treatment has been a far tougher ordeal than anything Butcher has faced before.

The chemo has left her drained--a feeling she describes as being similar to how she used to feel halfway through the 1,100-mile Iditarod.

"This is about McGrath," she said. "If there was ever a time when I felt like quitting, it was in McGrath."

Butcher's natural optimism is hard to suppress, though. She praises the efforts of the medical staff at the hospital and the support of Monson and their two daughters--Tekla, 10, and Chisana, 5.

"It's not that you don't feel good at all," she said. "Every day you find things to feel good about.

"You might get on top of one of them for a day or an hour, so that's what you end up spending your time concentrating on--what is feeling better today even if something else is feeling worse."

The entire family has been staying in Seattle during Butcher's treatment. Monson said he and the girls have been spending as much time at the hospital as the doctors will allow.

"It's been really moving to me to watch Susan work so hard to overcome this," he said.

Butcher draws strength from her past experiences, but said there's no comparison between the obstacles she had to overcome as a musher and this test of her health.

"I have broken a lot of bones out there, but it was just something I chose to do," she said. "I didn't choose to have leukemia. This was a battle that was given to me."

Donors needed

Butcher is not alone in her fight. About 12,000 people are diagnosed with the leukemia annually, according to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the National Cancer Institute. About 50 cases have been reported in Alaska.

Three Alaskans are sharing the cancer ward with Butcher at the hospital in Seattle.

"Two of the people I know," she said. "That's really pretty shocking."

The chances of finding a match are anywhere from 1-in-20,000 to 1-in-50,000, according to the National Marrow Donor Program. Once a match is found, though, the rejection rate is less than 5 percent.

"When you enter this facility, they give you hope," Butcher said. "But if you're transplant bound, like I am, you have to have a match."

Butcher's lucky. She's white. But for Alaskan Natives and other minorities, the odds of finding a match are far greater. Alaska Natives make up less than 1 percent of the 5.5 million people on the national registry of donors.

Butcher remains optimistic that Friday's donor drive by the Blood Bank of Alaska--which attracted more than 1,200 participants across the state thanks, in large part, to the publicity surrounding her diagnosis--will improve the odds for Alaska Natives and others waiting for a transplant.

"If 1,000 Alaskans donate and there's four of us on the ward, there's statistically a pretty good chance that we could help somebody today," she said.

Doctors have not yet told Butcher whether a match has been found for her, a situation she says has more to do with the chaos of the season than anything else.

"We have one more three-day holiday and then we're hoping we'll find out soon some sort of indication of where we stand for a match," she said.

Butcher's sister and half-sisters have been tested but none were found to be a good match, leaving her dependent on finding an unrelated donor through the national registry.

"Everyone is fighting their own battles," she said. "You get incredible support from family and doctors ... but it's your thing and you have to go deep within and ... find the positive."

True grit

Butcher has been fighting and winning her own battles for years.

She grew up in Massachusetts, moving to Alaska at the age of 20 after a stint as a veterinary technician in Colorado. She learned about driving dogs while working for Joe Redington, founder of the Iditarod.

She ran her first Iditarod in 1978, finishing 19th. The following year, Butcher and Redington made the only successful ascent of 20,320-foot Mount McKinley by dog team. That same year she made her sophomore trip to Nome, breaking the top 10 for the first time.

For the next five years, Butcher never finished out of the top 10.

In 1985, she was widely favored to become the first woman to win the 1,100-mile race, but she dropped out after a moose stomped her team, killing two of her dogs. Libby Riddles went on to win the race and capture the title of first female champion.

Butcher dominated the world of distance mushing for the next five years. She became the first person to win three consecutive Iditarods, from 1986 to 1988. She dropped a spot to second the following year before roaring back to another victory in 1990.

Butcher was expected to repeat her win in 1991, but a blizzard forced her and several other top contenders to turn around. Rick Swenson pushed through the storm to win the race. Butcher finished third.

Monson, a musher who started running the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race after the couple married in 1985, also had success with the dogs he raised with Butcher. He won the 1,000-mile Quest in 1988.

Butcher's discipline and drive have made her a legend in mushing circles. But her focus shifted after the birth of her daughters.

"Since the kids came along, our racing has been done around their vacations," Monson said. "It's more racing for the fun of racing."

The family moved from Eureka to a large home with indoor plumbing near the confluence of the Chena and Tanana rivers in Fairbanks. It's a big change for a woman accustomed to taking care of nearly 100 dogs and living in a cabin without water.

"Life in Fairbanks is not what I'm looking for," she said. "We'd all still be living in the Bush if we could, but the practicality of it is that the girls need socialization and need to be in school."

Motivation

Butcher was diagnosed in 2002 with polycythemia vera, a form of cancer that attacks the stem cells in the bone marrow. Blood tests show she could have developed the disease as early as 1991.

A successful bone marrow transplant, though, would cure both diseases, according to her doctors.

"If I survive this, I will be disease-free," Butcher said. "It's a big goal, but definitely one worth fighting for."

Butcher's hospital room is wallpapered with pictures of her family and their dogs.

If doctors allow her to return to Alaska this month, Butcher is looking forward to spending time in the White Mountains, north of Fairbanks, where the family recently finished building a small cabin.

"That's the carrot I'm putting out there for myself," she said.

Butcher even hopes to harness a small dog team for short runs while she's home.

"I think I'm strong enough," she said. "I'm not going to take out a 20-dog team, but I tend to push things to the limit."

The coming year was supposed to be somewhat of a comeback for Butcher. She planned on running a couple of mid-distance races with an eye toward trying the Yukon Quest in the future.

"My goals were to run a 300-mile race and do the best I could with the cool team of dogs I had," she said. "And now my goal is to fight leukemia and stay alive."

Staff writer R.A. Dillon can be reached at 459-7503 or rdillon@newsminer.com .