Cancer survivor Swarner: 'Everybody has their own Everest'

At one point or another, everyone's heard the phrase: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Maybe it goes in one ear and out the other -- just another cliche in a world full of them.

Don't, however, tell Sean Swarner those words are meaningless.

Swarner is a two-time cancer survivor who's gone on to scale the highest peaks on all seven continents, spreading his personal message of hope in the process. Thursday night at Roger Ludlowe Middle School in Fairfield, he'll share his inspirational story as part of the Connecticut Challenge Speaker Series.

"You have two choices, fighting or letting it win and letting it take you. I wasn't about to roll over and die," said Swarner, 37, by phone earlier last week from his home in Breckenridge, Colo. "(Cancer) didn't define me, but what I went through helped me define who I am."

Swarner grew up in the small town of Willard, Ohio, where he says people knew him simply as "cancer boy."

At age 13, he received the traumatic news that he had advanced, fourth-stage Hodgkins lymphoma after a knee injury suffered playing basketball caused all his joints to swell up. After a year of treatments, his cancer went into remission.

Later, the news only got worse.

When he was almost 16, he went for a checkup and doctors found a tumor on his lung.

"I looked like death warmed over," he said. "I was in remission for a year. Going for a checkup, then found the second cancer, Askin's sarcoma. That's when they told my parents I had 14 days to live.

"I didn't want to do treatments again, was going to lose my hair, my friends. I was going to lose my life until it was over. All my friends were out worrying about being fashionable, about trends, about being popular. I was 15 going on 40."

Swarner, though, fought again and won his second bout with cancer. He then went off to Westminster College in Pennsylvania, where nobody knew about his past. He wanted to study molecular biology and find a way to cure all forms of cancer by, as he says, "splicing genes and playing God." Organic chemistry didn't exactly suit him, so he switched over to psychology, aiming to help fellow cancer survivors.

Eventually, he moved to Florida to work on his doctorate, but he wasn't prepared yet to deal with emotions of cancer patients on a daily basis.

One day while surfing, he says it hit him -- how he could spread his message of survival and help others touched by cancer.

"At first I started thinking, like running across the country and sharing my story," Swarner said. "I kept thinking in my head, maybe something bigger like a marathon. I wanted something bigger. I wanted to keep climbing. I kept thinking bigger, bigger and bigger."

Thinking big led Swarner and his brother, Seth, to pack up everything they had, move to Boulder, Colo., in 2001 and start climbing. They founded the CancerClimber Association while living out of the back of his Honda Civic, using the local library as an office and campground pay phone as an office phone.

All the while, he kept reading the book "Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills," teaching himself how to climb and trying to mount as many of Colorado's 5,000-foot peaks as he could. He often did so with 100 pounds of rocks strapped to his back -- while only having partial function in his lungs as a result of his battles with cancer.

Eight months later, he was in Nepal at the base camp of Mount Everest -- the tallest peak in the world -- with a flag with names of people touched by cancer tucked in a pocket near his heart, which he later planted at the summit.

"When I got to the top, I collapsed to my knees and cried like a baby. It was a culmination of everything I'd done," Swarner said. "I was crying for everyone touched by cancer. When I got down, I wanted to reach around the world and share my story in hospitals. It's a purpose, to spread hope. When I was sick, I had nobody to look up to. I had no future."

Since his Everest climb, Swarner hasn't slowed down, traveling across the globe and reaching the tops of peaks like Mount Elbrus in Russia and Mount Vinson all the way south in Antarctica. He finished his continental journey by reaching the summit of Alaska's Mount McKinley in 2007.

Swarner says perhaps the most fulfilling part of his journey across the globe is listening to people, hearing stories of fellow cancer survivals and patients, or just random strangers. He told his own story in the 2007 book "Keep Climbing: How I Beat Cancer and Reached the Top of the World."

"Visiting the hospitals, everybody has a story to tell," he said. "God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason. Everybody has a story and you can learn something from anybody. Just sitting on a plane next to somebody and saying hello."

His next journey will culminate what he calls "the ultimate grand slam" by attempting to plant similar flags at both the North and South Poles and, in a perfect scenario, having fellow cancer survivors make the final part of the trek from the 89th parallel to the South Pole. Also, this summer he'll lead a group to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest point in Africa.

"From cancer patients to people sitting on the couch who are down on their luck, everybody has a mountain to climb, everybody has their own Everest," Swarner said.

mcardillo@ctpost.com; @CTPostCardillo

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