By David Harry

Staff Writer 

These days, Lori Nohr treats life as a day at the beach.

Less than a year after she was too exhausted to go out during her honeymoon, and less than a month after the last chemotherapy treatment to combat cancer attacking her immune system, Nohr, 28, is enjoying the sunshine and riding her bicycle around Sanford.

“I took much more from cancer than it took from me,” said Nohr, who was recently diagnosed as free from Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The lessons she took and her positive response to confronting a disease called “life challenging” as opposed to “life threatening” are the reasons her friends and colleagues will  walk for her in Saco on Saturday, Aug. 8.

“Lori’s Walk” was organized by Lisa Foley, who worked with Nohr at Southern Maine Medical Center in Biddeford. Foley said the goal is to raise $2,000 during a four-mile walk through Saco. The money raised will pay for printing costs of flyers advertising the walk and the cost for using Gov. John Fairfield School as a start and end point for the walk.

The remainder of the money raised will help Lori and her husband, Gabe Nohr, pay expenses from her illness and unemployment.

Nohr’s close friend Lori Loughran, a Springvale resident who has known Nohr for a decade, goes to the beach with her, but tears well up as she describes watching her friend confront cancer.

“Life is precious. You never know what is coming,” Loughran said.

Foley said she was “touched by [Nohr’s] strength,” but still wanted to more to help her colleague.

 “We all just felt awful and empty. We could not stand the feeling of not knowing what to do,” Foley said about the reaction to Nohr’s diagnosis last December.

Nohr said she was just married and on her honeymoon in Mexico when she started feeling ill.

“I began to feel exhausted, and I could not take a nap and feel better,” Nohr said.

She had always been in good health, is a vegetarian and got plenty of exercise, she said.

When the couple returned, Nohr went returned to work helping patients recovering from surgery. 

“I love the caring and interactive part with my patients,” Nohr said.

The exhaustion continued and a swollen node developed under one armpit. During work breaks, Nohr said she would sometimes take naps in her car.

Nohr was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma after a biopsy.

More than 8,000 people are diagnosed with the cancer each year in the U.S., according to the National Cancer Institute Web site.  The disease is controllable and curable, but Nohr said she will have blood screenings and CT scans for the next five years before doctors feel she is fully cancer free.

“Initially, I felt very alone,” she said of her diagnosis. “You feel so out of control over what is going on inside you.”

On Christmas Eve, Nohr made her first visit to oncologist Dr. Patricia Deisler of the Cancer Care Center of York County in Sanford.

Nohr was told the cancer was an aggressive form, and she underwent the first of 12 chemotherapy treatments just after New Year’s Day.

“She never promised she could cure me. The day I was diagnosed, I knew I was going to be a cancer survivor,” Nohr said.

 Her husband, the owner of a Kennebunk-based landscaping business, cooked, cleaned and accompanied her to all her medical appointments.

“You learn to live with these new rules,” she said. 

With her immune system weakened, Nohr could not work. Going out to shop or eat was not always possible. And she dreaded each round of treatments.

“I would be in tears. Chemotherapy tastes so metallic and horrible,” Nohr said.

Nohr said the hospital was unable to hold her job open, but she plans to reapply and hopes one day to become an oncology nurse.

Loughran and Nohr, who were bridesmaids in each other’s weddings, said Nohr’s illness brought a circle of friends even closer. But helping Nohr could still be awkward.

“People sometimes shied away, I wanted to say ‘let’s joke about my new ‘do,’” Nohr said.

Loughran said she tried to choose her words carefully.

“But I would still analyze everything I said. Did I say the wrong thing? Did I say enough?” she said.

As Nohr was about midway through her chemotherapy, Foley began organizing the walk. She wanted a route somewhere between Nohr’s Springvale home and where she and her colleagues worked.

Foley said Saco Police Officer Charlie LaBonte helped her find a route with sidewalks and a minimum of intersections. Foley’s friend Amanda Vanasse, who organized “Nicole’s Run” in memory of Nicole Oliver, a domestic abuse victim, provided key tips on organizing the walk. Mike Garrity, the maintenance director for the Saco schools, helped arrange for the school to be the registration site.

Foley said at least 50 people from the hospital have signed up to walk. Loughran, a Springvale resident like Nohr, said at least 20 of Nohr’s friends and family will walk.  

Staff writer David Harry can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 241