Diana Blythe of Beatrice has been committed to the Gage County Relay for Life for 10 years, but her commitment started long before.

Seventeen years ago, her son Travis was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma.

Rhabdomyosarcoma is a fast-growing, highly malignant tumor which accounts for over half of the soft tissue sarcomas, or cancers of connective tissue, in children.

It was three days before Travis’ third birthday.

“It was very scary. It was devastating.”

Travis went through two and a half years of chemotherapy, six weeks of radiation, tumor resections and multiple surgeries.

Travis, now 22, doesn’t remember much about his battle with cancer.

“I remember the trips to the hospitals,” he said, “but that’s about it.”

He said the kind doctors and nurses made it easy for him as a young child going through something so difficult.

After the treatments, Travis didn’t want to rest like everyone else. He had to play ball, his mother recalled.

“It didn’t bother me,” he said of the treatments.

Now Travis is a graduate of North Central Kansas Technical College in Beloit, Kan., where he majored in autobody mechanics.

“It makes you grateful that you’re among the survivors,” Diana said.

Diana now is on the Relay for Life committee for Gage County.

Her relay team, the One Stop Community Resource Center, were they only gold level fundraisers at the event. They raised over $5,000 as a team.

Among the survivors like Travis that walked the first lap at 7 p.m. was Diana’s co-worker at Health and Human Services and One Stop teammate Marian DeBuhr of rural Beatrice.

Sitting at work one day in 1993, Marian received a call she’d never forget.

It was her doctor—Marian had stage three uterine cancer.

“You can’t believe it and you’re shocked,” she said of hearing the news over the phone.

She called her husband.

“I have cancer. We’ve got to go talk to the doctor about it,” she told him, still stunned by the news she’d received minutes earlier.

“I needed to talk about it,” she said.

A nurse in the Health and Human Services office was able to chat with her and discuss what each stage meant for her.

“I was very fortunate,” she said. “They removed my uterus and they were pretty sure it cured me. I didn’t have to go through chemo or anything like that.”

Both Travis and Marian are in remission and were among 145 to walk as survivors, beginning the event on Friday night.

The event began 25 years ago nationally and in Gage County in 1998.

Relay teams walked through the night until 7 a.m. Saturday morning.

All proceeds from the event benefit the American Cancer Society and cancer patients in the Southeast Nebraska region.

“We’re making awareness, hoping to find a cure for cancer or its elimination some day,” Diana said.