From The Melbourne Yarra Leader - 30th November, 2005

RUNNING
SAM MORLEY

RECURRING health problems from a bone marrow transplant 18 years ago and the training regime of an elite athlete means that Christine Griffiths has to be tough.

But Griffiths, who lives and works in North Melbourne as a helper at the Bone Marrow Donor Institute, couldn’t imagine a different life.

“Running and sport has been my life for over 30 years. I guess I’m just a pig-headed and stubborn person,” she said.

Griffiths, 56 - a Melbourne Leader Sports Star nominee - recently competed at 2005 World Transplant Games in Canada, finishing fifth both in the 3000m road race and road walk.

She also competed in the super seniors’ category for table tennis, winning gold in the doubles and bronze in the singles.

But Griffiths’ hardest battle has been her health, with problems continually interfering with her training and lifestyle.

“I have to take 31 tablets a day,” she said.

“I’m continually getting sick and getting well. In my training I’ve always got to find a happy medium.”

“I got sick before these games and I couldn’t believe it. But I said ’stuff it all, I’m still going to go’.”

Griffiths received a bone marrow transplant in 1988, just one year before she set the world record for the 3000m track run in the 1989 World Transplant Games.

Since then she has competed in four games, claimed 12 international medals and more than 100 Australian title medals.

Griffiths has also been chosen as one of eight Australians to carry the Olympic torch at the Winter Olympics in Italy in January.

“The awards aren’t important to me, but the competing is,” she says.

“Competetion has kept me alive, it has given me a focus in my life because it didn’t matter how sick I was, I would always go out and run.”

Griffiths is unsure about whether she will compete at the 2007 World Transplant games in Thailand.

“I’ll take life as it comes, there are a lot of hard blows, but it doesn’t bother me because I’m a person who’s always on the go,” she said.

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

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.