When a 35-year-old Sherry Pollex was diagnosed with Stage 3 ovarian cancer in 2014, she was given a 30 percent chance of survival over the next five years.
Instead, she lived nine more years. Nine. And during nearly a decade of cancer battles, Pollex became an inspiring figure who soaked up every drop of the extra time she fought so hard for.
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Pollex died early Sunday morning at age 44, with cancer taking a beautiful soul whose presence was a gift to so many. But cancer cannot erase the lessons she gave us unless we fail to remember them, so we can’t make the mistake of letting them fade away.
As the longtime partner of NASCAR champion Martin Truex Jr. before their breakup late last year, Pollex impacted countless lives in a positive way. She never planned on being an inspirational disease fighter — who would? — but found a way to mentally wrap her arms around an unenviable situation.
“I often wonder if that’s my purpose here,” she said last July. “It’s maybe not what I would have chosen for myself — nobody really wants to be the poster child for any type of cancer — but maybe I’m supposed to go through all this so I can pave the way for other women.
“On some days, that can be a really hard pill to swallow. But on other days, it’s like, ‘You know, I’ve been given this really important role in this life, and if I’m going to leave a legacy behind and help other people, then I need to do it 100 percent.’”
Pollex was trying to get pregnant in 2014 when she realized her stomach felt bloated. Maybe this was what being pregnant felt like, she thought. Instead, doctors discovered she had 40 to 50 tumors in her body, would need to have surgery five days later and require a radical hysterectomy that meant she would never have children.
That was her “Why me?” moment, she later recalled. She threw herself to the floor in agony over the news. But weeks later, while talking to the late NASCAR broadcaster Steve Byrnes, who passed away from cancer in 2015, she had a change of perspective.
Byrnes had told her about receiving chemotherapy with a 97-year-old woman on his right and a 19-year-old on his left, and it made him realize cancer does not discriminate. Taking Byrnes’ words to heart, Pollex decided to intentionally feel grateful she had reached age 35 before her diagnosis and became determined to find purpose in all of it.
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“I haven’t felt sorry for myself a day since,” she said. “I just thought, ‘I’m gonna live every day and I’m going to live it to the best of my ability. I’m going to be a happy person while I’m living it and whatever happens happens.
“God has blessed me with this much time on this earth, if He takes me now, then whatever I’ve done and whatever I’m blessed to do, then let that be my legacy here.”
In the years since, Pollex beat cancer three different times. At one time, she was in remission for nearly three years. But this time, after running out of effective options — both with cancer drugs and surgery — her body didn’t have the defenses it needed for a fourth victory.
Pollex never gave any hints to the public she wasn’t doing well. Outside of an interview with The Athletic last summer, you would have never known something was amiss — including through last week, when she frequently posted positive messages on social media.
That included the recent “Catwalk for a Cause” fashion show event, in which children batting pediatric cancer get to dress up and walk the runway with NASCAR drivers. Catwalk was Pollex’s brainchild before she experienced cancer herself, and it only furthered her resolve to improve the quality of life for cancer patients when she joined them in the battle.
She was often opinionated, and one strong belief she held was how ridiculous it was to think anyone should pass up the opportunity to inspire others on a daily basis. That could include things as basic as spreading positivity by smiling at people in the grocery store checkout line or being kind toward someone who seems like they’re having a bad day.
“You don’t have to be a cancer patient to inspire somebody,” she said.
“People ask me all the time: ‘I don’t get it. How do you stay so positive and how are you happy all the time when you have Stage 3C ovarian cancer?’” she added. “And I wake up every day and just think this life is amazing. If you look around you, there’s so much positivity and there’s so much beauty in this earth.”
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She urged others to practice gratitude (she wrote daily in a gratitude journal), have a healthy lifestyle through clean eating and the use of non-toxic household products (featured on her “Sherry Strong” website), eliminate negative people from their lives, and focus on life’s small-but-wonderful moments like watching the sunset or appreciating the flight of a passing butterfly.
“The color in the sky is bluer and the grass is greener,” she said of how she viewed the world in the extra time she received. “It’s so hard to explain to people that you have to go through what I’ve been through to experience that, and I hate that. I wish everybody could just experience that and not have to go through tragedy to feel that.
“Everything about my life has been more vibrant and colorful and amazing and joyful. And I hate that it took cancer for me to see that, to see how amazing that all is.”
Pollex emphasized that how we handle life’s setbacks is a choice. We can choose our own attitudes in those moments, she said. It’s up to us to look at a challenging time, realize how small it is in the grand scheme of our lives and respond accordingly.
More than 20 percent of Pollex’s life was spent in the years after her diagnosis, but it was by far the most powerful and impactful time. Instead of spending it being angry, she made a choice to be as positive as she could about all of it, viewing it as a second chance.
“How can I use it to do good in this world so that when I leave here, I leave behind this legacy of wanting to help others and bring positivity and sunlight and happiness to other people?” she asked herself.
Without a doubt, Pollex answered her own question in the most beautiful and inspiring way.
(Photo: Chris Graythen / Getty Images)
Jeff Gluck has been traveling on the NASCAR beat since 2007, with stops along the way at USA Today, SB Nation, NASCAR Scene magazine and a Patreon-funded site, JeffGluck.com. He's been hosting tweetups at NASCAR tracks around the country since 2009 and was named to SI's Twitter 100 (the top 100 Twitter accounts in sports) for five straight years.
