By Mark Ambrogi
Lisa Kroshus has been a regular participant in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure since the early 1990s.
“Little did I know that contribution would come full circle and the investment I made and all those races would come back to help me personally,” she said. “I like to think I was saving my own life when I was investing my time with Race for the Cure all those years ago.”
Kroshus, 47, is now a breast cancer survivor and the Fishers resident is serving as one of Central Indiana’s Race for the Cure ambassadors this year. For the first time, Kroshus put together a team, Team Kroshus It, for the 25th annual race April 16 at White River State Park in Indianapolis. Kroshus plans to walk.
Kroshus was diagnosed with Stage 2 triple negative breast cancer on May 1, 2015.
“I had 18 rounds of chemotherapy due to the aggressive (form),” Kroshus said. “The doctors wanted to do the chemo first to see if it worked and it did. I’m what the doctors call a complete clinical response. In layman’s terms by the time I finished chemo, the mass was gone, which is pretty fantastic. I finished chemo in November and had a double mastectomy Dec. 7. We wanted to be aggressive because triple negative has a high reoccurrence percentage.”
Kroshus, who is vice president of corporate sponsorships for the Indy Fuel, likes to say her job saved her. On April 23, 2015, she dropped her pen on the floor in the office.
“When I bent over to pick it up, I hit my chest on the arm of my chair and it hurt so bad,” Kroshus said.
It kept hurting, so she went to see her doctor a few days later thinking maybe she had an infected gland.
“Nowhere in my thoughts were breast cancer,” Kroshus said. “My doctor said she had to get into an oncologist right away because it wasn’t normal. Those words alone were frightening.”
Kroshus, her husband, Jerry, and her mother, Linda Turkoly, are members of her team.
“They’ve been my angels through this whole thing,” Kroshus said.
Registration fees range from $12.50 to $36. For more, visit komenindy.org/race.
