Microsoft employee named honoree for SummeRun event

Published 9:34 am Friday, August 9, 2013

In late May 2001, Susun Hosford lay down in the sauna at her gym and noticed a lump the size of a lemon protruding from the left side of her lower abdomen.

She made an appointment with her OB/GYN, who took immediate action with a sonograph and a blood test. When the results came back, they learned it was late-stage ovarian cancer. Hosford, a senior consultant at Microsoft Corp., went into surgery two months later and underwent nine months of chemotherapy.

During her treatment, she learned about the SummeRun and Walk for Ovarian Cancer. The 5K run/walk is put on every year by the Marsha Rivkin Center for Ovarian Cancer Research with proceeds benefiting the Seattle-based nonprofit.

Hosford participated in the event — which takes place in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, where she also lives — but she didn’t realize the toll it would take on her body and how tired she would be during the walk.

“I literally had been one week out of surgery and one week into chemo,” she said about the event’s timing.

Despite that first experience, Hosford — who was 50 when she was diagnosed — has participated in the SummeRun every year since then. The now 62-year-old has also been cancer free since then.

This year, Hosford was also the SummeRun honoree, an ovarian cancer survivor who is chosen to be the spokesperson for the event.

According to a Rivkin Center press release, the honoree is “typically someone who has made advocacy and building awareness of ovarian cancer part of her life.”

After her first SummeRun, Hosford continued fundraising for the Rivkin Center event. She wanted to get more involved after a few years and so began volunteering for the organization. In addition, Hosford decided to focus any major fundraising she does on the Rivkin Center.

“I decided primarily because the Rivkin Center is very focused on scientific research,” she said.

Hosford explained that the treatment she received after she was diagnosed was a clinical trial.

Nine years after she first got involved in the Rivkin Center, Hosford was asked to sit on the nonprofit’s board of directors. She was hesitant at first, telling the executive director who asked her that she is not a “big name” who could help increase the Rivkin Center’s visibility; nor was she someone with deep pockets who could contribute financially.

Hosford said this was exactly why she was asked: She was someone who had actually survived ovarian cancer. To this day, Hosford is still the only Rivkin Center board member who had been an ovarian cancer patient.

Ovarian cancer is often referred to as the silent killer because there is no definitive way to detect it, and once it is found, the cancer has often progressed to a very late stage. And with symptoms that include abdominal bloating, discomfort or pain, a lack of appetite, lack of energy and nausea, it’s easy to mistake them for something else.

Hosford pointed out that many women have experienced these symptoms all at the same time for various reasons having nothing to do with cancer. She also acknowledged that she was lucky to have found that lemon-sized lump because not many other women have such an obvious symptom that something is wrong, adding that if she were 20 pounds heavier, she probably wouldn’t have found the lump until it was too late.

“Diagnosing this disease is almost impossible,” Hosford said.