Christine Griffiths: Official Site

From The Post-Times – Monday 2nd October, 1989

A BUNDOORA resident’s outstanding performance at the World Transplant Games helped Australia earn second place out of 34 teams.

Christine Griffiths, a bone marrow transplant recipient won gold medals for the 3000m track event and tennis doubles and a silver medal for the 200m sprint.

“It was wonderful. Apparently the look on my face said it all,” Ms Griffiths said.

Her time for the 200m sprint was 38 seconds.

“For me that was good because I had only been sprinting for two months. I’m a long distance runner.

“I was so nervous for the tennis match but my partner helped me through.

“Running was different because running is my area.”

Ms Griffiths said the Singapore games should have been called the friendship games.

“We all shook hands before we competed. And during the closing ceremony I had people run up and give me mementos.”

She said the game’s biggest problem was the language barrier.

“But I made an effort to speak to the people who could not speak English.”

The United Kingdom came first and the United States third.

The transplant games are held every two years.

Hungary will host the 1991 games.

(photo caption)
GOLD and silver medal winner in the World Transplant Games, Christine Griffiths, is proud of her achievements.

Picture: GEOFF FOLETTA

The Melbourne Post-Times, Monday 4th September, 1989

TWO Preston City residents will be in Australia’s team for this year’s World Transplant Games in Singapore.

More than 1000 people from 37 countries will compete in the games from September 10-14.

Reservoir resident and kidney transplant recipient Mrs. Carol O’Brien said the Games “make us realise we’re not zombies and that we’re not alone”.

She said they gave the recipients a new lease on life, made them feel worthwhile and allowed them to participate in sports.

Mrs. O’Brien will compete in senior swimming events. It is her first time at the Games, although she received her new kidney six years ago.

She took up swimming after the operation and believes there is a good chance Australia can take out a gold medal.

Bundoora resident and bone marrow transplant recipient Ms Christine Griffiths will represent Australia in tennis and sprinting.

Ms Griffiths has been a long distance runner but will compete in the sprints because longer events are not on the program.

“I’ve never done the 100 m and 200 m sprints before, so I’ll be trying out something new,” Ms Griffiths said.

She expects to come across some tough competition, particularly from the Soviets, who are competing for the first time.

“The more the better,” Ms Griffiths said.

As part of her training she is running seven times a week, taking tennis lessons and playing four times a week. She took up tennis after her operation.

Both competitors have been sponsored by Apex.

(Photo Caption)
CHRISTINE Griffiths puts her best tennis shot into action as she prepares for the World Transplant Games.

By TANIA KUTNEY

MS CHRIS Griffiths, 39, a nurse and educator from LaTrobe University, is an avid long distance runner whose only concern is not to win a race, but to make it to the end.

She ran 60 km a week in training for fun runs and races with the Veterans Athletics Club and the Malvern Harriers, until she was told by doctors last October that she had leukaemia.

This life-threatening illness did not deter her from running. She continued racing and jogged 8 km only weeks before a bone marrow transplant.

Chemotherapy

She was admitted to Vaucluse Hopsital in Moreland Rd, Brunswick, for chemotherapy treatment 10 weeks ago.

Visitors have to wear a mask to protect her from any germs.

Medication caused her hair to fall out and made her weak. She said she was also having problems with her mouth, caused by the steroids she was taking, and could only eat soft foods.

When asked if she was ever frightened of dying, Chris said no.

“If you keep dwelling on the fact that you have leukaemia, it can become an obsession and you may never get well,” she said.

“I try to push it as far back in my mind as I can, keeping my mind and body active.”

Before the transplant operation Chris would often hop on an exercise bike and vigorously pedal away.

She said that riding the bike helped her block things out.

She is also judging the works of students from a college to keep herself busy.

Her positive attitude and strong spirit, she said, made her strong enough to fight the disease.

She looked up at a poster on the wall of a lone runner facing a long, winding, uphill road and said: “That’s me”.

Below the poster were the words: The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep on running.

“I’m facing a long road and I don’t care if I win, as long as I make it to the end,” said Chris.

Leukaemia is a disease that causes a high count of white blood cells.

Although white cells are meant to kill germs in the body, an over-production of them renders them useless as they are too immature to be effective.

Chris said she was lucky to find a donor, considering there was only a one-in-four chance of a sibling being compatible.
Doctors say that only siblings can be compatible bone marrow donors because of complications with genes.

Finding donor

Donating bone marrow is not like giving blood; not everyone is suitable. It is also rare for parents to be compatible with their children.

Chris has two sisters, Carmel, 35, and Catherine, 31. Compatibility tests showed that only Carmel could donate, which she did.

Carmel entered the Alfred Hospital’s bone marrow until, Victoria’s only centre that does bone marrow transplants, six weeks ago.

Doctors removed the marrow from the base of her spine and administered it to Chris intravenously.

The bone marrow, which Chris describes as blood-like with a jelly type substance, will find its way through her body to the party in need.

Chris is expected to be out of hospital this week and she hopes to return to a normal life.

Her first aim is to visit a local hot bread shop in Bundoora and buy an Italian sesame bread that she has been dreaming about.

She is also looking forward to teaching again and beginning another health course.

Her illness has not stopped her passion for running, but she will have to wear a mask to protect her from germs.

She admits it may be some time before she is able to run 60 km a week again, but is happy that she has a better chance of survival since the transplant.

Her advice to other leukaemia victims is to “Do whatever you have to do to keep you alive”.

Her life span before the transplant was between two and three years.

Doctors will know in 12 months whether or not Chris will lead a healthy and happy life, but Chris is convinced she is cured and is looking forward to getting on with life.

(Photo Caption)
LEUKAEMIA victim, Ms Chris Griffiths . . . The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep on running.

From The Melbourne Herald

By GERARD WRIGHT

CHRISTINE Griffiths refers to it, by way of introduction, as “this particular thing”.

Her doctor, Jeff Szer, calls it “a time bomb” and offers some daunting odds about the likelihood of it being overcome: 50/50 and 4/1.

It is known as chronic myeloid leukeamia and is every bit as serious as it sounds, although not as bad as it could be.

It is a cancer of the bone and the blood. Left alone, it can kill its unwitting host within three years. Most often, according to Dr Szer, it occurs because of a chromosonal abnormality.

Next March or April, Christine Griffiths’ body will be given some assistance to fight the cancer through a transplant of bone marrow from her sister Carmel.

In the meantime she has her plans: to go to the beach, watch some television, train hard for the next month, at at 7.30 am on Saturday, January 30, take her place in the only women’s team for the Doxa Two-Ton Run, a two-day, 200 kilometre team relay around Port Phillip Bay.

At 38, Christine Griffiths is to weekend fun running what Bob Hawke is to social golf – a part-timer and borderline obsessive who finds friendship, fitness and satisfaction from a largely solitary pursuit.

She has run 50-60 kilometers a week for the past eight years since she took up running as an asthmatic, fitting her training between stints of part-time secondary school teaching at Epping and nursing at Latrobe University’s Chisolm college.

In mid-winter this year she found that try as she might, she could not progress. In fact, she was going slower, in defiance of her body’s best efforts.

She told her training partners that she was just taking it easy, and herself that she was tired from training and the fun-runs she competed in each weekend.

The diagnosis at the end of August crystallised a few ambitions. “One of my aims when I found I had this particular thing was to run in the Veterans Games and to go in this (Doxa) run.” And give to those who knew her a picture of remarkable emotional resilience.

“She’s very determined when she’s racing,” her friend Jill Robinson said. “When she’s running, nothing will get in her way.”

Says Christine of the disease: “You just have to accept it. It’s not going to go away.” Her options for treatment are simple.

“This disease is a bit of a time bomb,” Dr Szer said. “You are eventually going to die of it unless you have a transplant. That’s the only way out at the moment.”

Christine agrees. “The chances are 50/50 that I will come through, or not be able to tell the story. I want to live to be an old person, rather than disappear off the face of the earth.”

Chemotheraphy is the treatment that will both traumatise and cleanse her body. Running has seen the balm for her spirit.

Last Saturday she covered 10 kilometers around Princes Park in 47 minutes and 26 seconds, her fastest time since April.

That, she says, was because she has always had things under control. “I have never stopped running the whole time, even when it was taking me an hour to run 10 kilometers and it was harder to do it then than when you are really running hard. That was what kept me going. I would go out feeling awful and come back feeling good.”

Complicating the affliction and her proposed recovery is a problem with her renal system.

Some people are born with fatalism, others have it thrust upon them. Christine’s attitude, is, if anything, even more positive for these setbacks.

For the bone marrow transplant, the chances are one in four with each brother or sister, that their marrow will be compatible with the recipient.

With those odds, Christine considers the fact that her sister was compatible with her a head start.

She talks of chemotherapy and morphine drips with a candor that many people would find off-putting. Her friends say this is her way of helping people come to terms with her illness.

In the meantime she will live very much for the present.

“I don’t really want to think about how bad it is because I’ll face that at the time. You enjoy things now and when the time comes, put up or shut up if you can.”

(Photo Caption)
OUT FRONT: Christine Griffiths leads the women’s relay team in training for the 200km Doxa Two-Ton Run around Port Phillip Bay

PICTURE: BRUCE HOWARD