Training Keeps Tulsa Cancer Survivor Physically, Mentally Strong

On 71st street in south Tulsa, between Sheridan and Memorial, is a little shopping center. In that shopping center is a gym, and in that gym, a battle is being fought.

“I just did not feel like a functional adult human being at 33,” said Casey Norris.

Four years ago, at the age of 29, Norris was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer.

“Obviously, you’re in this body for so long, and then all of a sudden, it’s just malfunctioning and it’s doing really weird things,” she explained.

Three doctor visits in six months finally got her tested.

“You’ve just come out of sedation, and the doctor says, ‘Well we don’t think it’s cancer,” Norris stated.

But, it was.

Two weeks later, she was in surgery.

Being so young, her cancer was more aggressive and needed to be treated as aggressively as possible.

“I was the youngest person many of my doctors had ever treated for this type of cancer,” she said.

What followed was quite literally the fight of her life.

First, it was six weeks of radiation treatment with a chemo pump, then four months of chemotherapy that left her wrecked.

“I know this sounds ridiculous,” stated Norris. “You may not believe it; but, when I was having conversations with people I was like grabbing my hair and lifting up my head with my hands.”

She added, “Really, your options are treatment or die. So, your options are treatment, and let’s just get it done. It’s the times between when you’re directionless that are pretty terrible. It’s sheer boredom, heightened with moments of pure terror.”

But then, hope came when Norris crossed paths with a personal trainer in Tulsa named Katie Ford.

Norris got to thinking and something clicked.

“My three-year mark was right around when I met Katie, and I really started feeling like, literally, the mental fog kinda lifted,” Norris recalled.

She found weightlifting.

“There’s the cliché thing online you read, like, ‘I’m going to the gym so I’m harder to kill,” and that’s totally, that’s how that’s what we’re shooting for,” said Norris.

It’s been nothing short of life-changing.

“I need to not limit myself,” she stated. “I have some false sense of, ‘this is the best I can do,’ like I’m never going to do any better, because Katie’s gonna say, ‘oh no, you can,’and then I’m gonna do it.”

For Norris, her actions are “one small step for mankind, one giant leap for the girl that had cancer three years ago.”

“Working out has destroyed my weekend naps,” she added. “I’m totally a weekend napper; I have been my whole life. But, I workout in the mornings, and then after you workout, you just have so much energy.”

Norris is currently in “NEC,” no evidence of cancer.

Remission doesn’t begin until year five. She’s in year three, but she’s living life thanks to something she never thought she’d do.

“Don’t limit yourself just because it makes you nervous, or just because it makes you a little bit afraid,” she said.