Relay for Life

When: 6 p.m. Friday- 6 a.m. Saturday

Where: The Panther Trail

Donation: $25 per team

-Proceeds will go to cancer research

Ben Vining appreciates everyday of his life.

For many years, he had a pain that would not go away.

“I had a real sharp pain on the right side around my waist,” he said. “I had it for about seven years and nothing really happened.”

Vining, 24, said he told his doctors about the pain, but they never paid it much attention.

That was until December 2004 when this pain changed his life.

“I had a CAT scan that night and a biopsy, and didn’t find out what it was until about a month later,” he said.

Vining waited in agony for four long weeks before he heard the news. The pain Vining had felt for so many years was paraganglioma, a rare type of cancer.

Relay for Life will begin tonight at 6 and will go for 12 hours. It will be on the Panther Trail and proceeds will go to cancer research.

“Students should participate in Relay for Life because it’s a good cause and it’s done a lot of good for cancer patients,” Vining said. “I’m sure everyone knows someone with cancer and at some point, everyone’s lives are going to be affected by it.”

Vining graduated from Eastern last summer with a bachelor’s degree in physical education with a concentration in exercise science.

He said the most difficult part of the disease was telling his friends and loved ones.

The first person he told was his mom.

“It was just so shocking,” Darla Vining, Ben’s mother said. “I told him we would get through it and get rid of it.”

Then he had to tell his roommates.

“At the time I had four roommates and they were all worried and asked a lot of questions,” Vining said.

Nick Volek was Vining’s best friend at Eastern.

“I tried to be the person who kept his mind off of it, but I didn’t want to be the person who just said ‘I’m so sorry’ all the time,” Volek said.

Vining said sharing the condition helped his relationships.

“If anything, it bought my friends and I closer,” he said.

Doctors didn’t know how long Vining will live.

“The doctors could not tell me anything about how long I’d live,” he said. There are people that have paraganglioma and only live 6-12 months. I’ve had doctors say 1 percent lives to be 45.”

Vining continued to attend school despite the cancer. He underwent chemotherapy in the spring semester of 2005, then took a break from it during the summer and went back to chemotherapy in the fall of 2005. Last winter, he underwent radiation therapy.

Doctors urged Vining to stay off his feet as a precaution because radiation can make bones more brittle possibly causing them to break.

“I had to stop being on a bowling league at Eastern and working at Thomas dining center because doctors wanted me off my feet,” Vining said.

Today, the only indication that Vining has cancer is his monthly doctor visits.

Vining now knows just how precious life can be.

“You really don’t know how long you will be around,” Vining said. “Now I spend as much time as I get with my family.”