Cancer survivor riding PMC Winter Cycle for cousin, brother

SUTTON -- When the Pan-Mass Challenge Winter Cycle kicks off this weekend at Fenway Park, one Sutton woman will be riding on behalf of three members of her family.

Kelli Tower has been cancer free for almost 10 years. She was diagnosed in the early stages of melanoma after spotting a pen dot sized mole that appeared on her body.

"I said, 'I have been losing sleep over it. Can we just biopsy it?' It just doesn't look like any of my other moles," said Tower, explaining what she told her dermatologist. "My classroom phone rang, and they said, 'Kelli this is the doctor. Your pathologies came back, and this is melanoma.' Still have nightmares about it, what if? Where would I be?"

Surgeons were able to quickly remove the cancerous cells.

Weeks before her scare, she learned that her 15-month-old cousin, Carter, was facing a terminal form of leukemia. The little boy had gone through radiation, chemotherapy, and a bone marrow transplant from his three-year-old sister. The treatment led to 54 days of remission before it came back.

"In that time frame, that was the last few weeks we had with Carter before we lost him on January 21. It happened to be my first day back to work since my surgery," remembers Tower.

In September, her brother discovered he had stage four melanoma on his vertebrae. The original x-rays did not show any signs of the tumor. Tower says doctors told him it was just a strain in his back.

"He was traveling and sneezed. In that little sneeze, he felt a huge pop and heard a large crack, and lost feeling in his legs," said Tower, adding that her brother demanded an urgent scan of his body. "Came back and said it looks like a tumor? That changed the whole thing."

Tower says the first set of doctors he saw told him that there was nothing more they could do. That is when she got him situated with her doctor at Dana Farber. They were able to give him immunotherapy. He is now cancer free.