After open chest surgery, she plans to run half-marathon
Like the song says, you gotta have heart. Nobody knows this better than a woman who had a cancerous tumor pressing up against her ticker five years ago yet is currently training for marathons.
Hillsborough resident Ursula House Siberry was diagnosed with cancer in the fall of 2005, and had a tumor removed six weeks later. After finding it tough to make it up a flight of stairs in 2008, she is getting in shape to run on April 3 in her second half-marathon in as many years.
”The type of cancer that I had is thymoma,” said Ms. House Siberry, who also suffers from asthma. “It’s a cancer of the thymus gland, and it’s one of the rare cancers in the United States. Usually it’s less than 1 percent of all the cancers that are diagnosed; there’s usually about 500 people in the whole United States who have it.
”Your thymus gland makes your white blood cells and lymphocytes, and helps protect your body against infection. My tumor was growing and pressing on my heart, and restricting the blood flow. They cut my chest open with a sternal saw, spread my ribs and took out my thymus to remove the tumor, which was squashing my heart because it had grown so large. It was 13 by 9 centimeters.”
The procedure was in early October 2005, and couldn’t have come at a worse time for Ms. House Siberry and her husband, Bill. During the time she was sick, Mr. Siberry’s brother was fighting pancreatic cancer and three other friends were diagnosed with some form of cancer.
”Of the five people who were diagnosed, myself and another woman are the only two people still alive,” she said.
The surgery kept the 40-year-old out of her Global Technical Services job at Johnson & Johnson for six and one-half months. When she finally made it back to her office on Route 202 in Raritan, she never felt right. In the recuperation she lost 40 pounds and was in pain performing the simplest of tasks.
”When you first have that procedure, you can’t use your arms,” she said. “They’re cutting through your chest wall, so everything is sewn back together; your range of motion is very limited. Putting on clothes is extremely painful, when I started driving it was painful, the pain was severe for quite a while. The first few times I was walking up the stairs, if I did it with too much force I could feel the pain. It would just jar my chest. It was months before I could pick up my computer bag.”
A gift from Mr. Siberry set in motion a chain of events that would restore confidence, change Ms. House Siberry’s life and help define who this woman is.
”After I had been sick for a while, I felt fragile physically and emotionally,” Ms. House Siberry said. “I came back to work and started doing my normal things but I never felt great. This went on for a while and I did a couple of Susan G. Komen walks but nothing spectacular. My husband had gotten me a mountain bike, and I decided to sign up for a bike ride.”
After conquering numerous races throughout 2009 and 2010, including a 77.2-mile race from Philadelphia to South Jersey, Ms. House Siberry decided to take it one step further. She signed up to run the seventh annual More/Fitness Half-Marathon that April. The foot race lasts 13.1 miles and is held in Central Park in Manhattan. With 10,000 runners, it is the country’s largest all-female half-marathon.
”That one took me a long time (to complete) because I had to run and walk, and it was so cold I had to stop and take my asthma medicine,” she said. “It took me about three hours to do that because I didn’t get to train as much as I would have liked to. My goal was just to finish it. I didn’t care if it took me five hours. I just wanted to finish.”
Ms. House Siberry’s participation was almost jeopardized by another session under the knife.
”I ended up having some surgery in January (of 2010) because they thought I had non-Hodgkins lymphoma,” she said. “The doctor told me not to do the half-marathon because I had some complications from the surgery, but I ignored him. It was 40 degrees and pouring rain that day.”
On April 3, Ms. House Siberry will compete in this year’s More/Fitness Half Marathon. Although she is training more than she was able to last year, she is realistic about her finish.
”It’s not like I’m ever going to be the first person across the finish line,” she said. “For me, the fun and the joy of it is the fact that I can even get out there and do these things. The winning is the fact that I can complete these things.”
After going from having her chest cracked open to competing in marathons, Ms. House Siberry has set lofty expectations for the next couple of years.
”My goal for 2013 is to run the New York Marathon,” she said.
Not too shabby for someone who will have wires holding her chest together for the rest of her life.

