Incredible New Miss America, 22, Is an Air Force Pilot, Harvard Student, and Navigated Losing Her Mom to Pancreatic Cancer — “Give Anything If My Mom Could Have Been There”
Incredible New Miss America, 22, Is an Air Force Pilot, Harvard Student, and Navigated Losing Her Mom to Pancreatic Cancer — “Give Anything If My Mom Could Have Been There”
The newly crowned Miss America, Miss Colorado Madison Marsh — an active-duty Air Force pilot and a Harvard graduate student — has proven that the sky is the limit with her incredible achievements.
Marsh lost her mother in 2018 to pancreatic cancer and has admirably channeled her grief in a positive way to help propel her forward as she continues to honor her mom by living with purpose.
Pancreatic cancer is tricky because symptoms often do not present themselves until the cancer has already progressed, meaning it’s more rare to catch early, and it’s crucial for people with a family history of the disease to consult with a genetic counselor to learn more about your risk and options.
The newly crowned Miss America, Miss Colorado Madison Marsh — an active-duty Air Force pilot and a Harvard graduate student who received her undergrad in astrophysics from the Air Force Academy — has proven that the sky is the limit with her incredible achievements — and has honored her mother, who died in 2018 from pancreatic cancer, every step of the way.
“Still doesn’t feel real that I walked on the Miss America stage,” the 22-year-old wrote on Instagram. “I would have given anything to have my mom in that crowd last night. As always, I live for her and will forever advocate for past, present, and future pancreatic cancer patients.”
And she’s not just talking the talk. According to Marsh’s Miss Colorado website, while a graduate intern at Harvard, Marsh is studying artificial intelligence and its role in detecting pancreatic cancer. She is also the founder of Whitney’s Race, in honor of her mom.
While Marsh’s success and positive approach to coping with grief may be just as difficult beneath the surface, it can prove to be immensely rewarding and give a person more of a purpose to live by, all while inspiring to others who may feel infinitely more challenged while coping with loss.
Dr. Samantha Boardman, a New York-based psychiatrist and author, shared “the three wellsprings of vitality” to SurvivorNet, explaining them as “pathways to embrace your everyday resilience.”
In other words, these are tools people who may be struggling with mental health issues can embrace to help maintain a certain sense of positivity. And those positive feelings can really go a long way when people are facing a health challenge like a cancer diagnosis.
According to Dr. Boardman, these three wellsprings of vitality are:
Connecting. This involves how you’re connecting with others and having meaningful interactions. It involves being a good listener and being engaged with the people around you who you care about.
Contribution. How are you adding value to the people around you? Are you helping them in ways that feel meaningful to them? Basically, this entails contributing/engaging with others in a meaningful way.
Feeling challenged. Being “positively challenged” could involve learning something new (perhaps by taking a new class or reading an interesting book) and expanding your mind in some way. “Those are the cores of vitality, and the core pathways to enhance your everyday resilience,” Dr. Boardman said.
Everyone suffers differently and people who are unable to channel their feelings more actively should not feel ashamed, but with proper tools learned speaking with a mental health counselor, there are many possibilities to conquer the paralysis that many people feel after loss.
Whitney Marsh’s Pancreatic Cancer Battle
Whitney Marsh died at age 41, just ten months after her diagnosis.
Whitney had been scheduled for surgery, but a CT scan showed that her cancer had spread. She died less than four months later. Even while facing advanced disease, Whitney had been running 8-10 miles or biking 30-40 miles per day. “Even the super-healthy are no match,” the site says. “Early diagnosis and improved pre-operative treatments options are the future.”
Madison Marsh’s mom, the late Whitney Marsh. Photo: Whitney’s Race
Whitney’s Race has raised over $230,000 since 2019 and has been actively donating large donations to programs such as MD Anderson’s Moon Shots Program, an action plan that launched in 2012 to end cancer, with the Pancreatic Cancer Moon Shot being one of its focuses.
Learning More About Pancreatic Cancer
Pancreatic cancer is tricky because symptoms often do not present themselves until the cancer has already progressed, meaning it’s more rare to catch it early.
Dr. Anirban Maitra, Co-Leader of the Pancreatic Cancer Moon Shot at MD Anderson Cancer Center, told SurvivorNet in a previous interview: “Around eighty percent of pancreatic cancer patients already have advanced disease by the time they’re diagnosed, severely limiting treatment options.”
“Just twenty percent of patients have their cancer caught early enough to make them a candidate for surgery, the only way pancreatic cancer can be cured,” Dr. Maitra added.
People with a family history of pancreatic cancer from a close relative fall into the high-risk category and should discuss screening options with their doctor. If you are high risk, tests such as an MRI scan or an endoscopic ultrasound, which is a minimally invasive procedure to assess diseases of the digestive tract, can be performed.
Other pancreatic cancer risk factors include things you can change and others you’re born with. The National Cancer Institute lists common risk factors as:
Family History
Inherited genetic syndromes
Tobacco use
Obesity
Diabetes
Chronic pancreatitis
When You’re High Risk for Developing Pancreatic Cancer
Parents, siblings and children of someone with pancreatic cancer, such as Madison, are considered high risk for developing the disease because they are first-degree relatives of the individual.
PGVs (pathogenic germline variants) are changes in reproductive cells (sperm or egg) that become part of the DNA in the cells of the offspring. Germline variants are passed from parents to their children, and are associated with increased risks of several cancer types, including pancreatic, ovarian and breast cancers. Germline mutations in ATM, BRCA1, BRCA2, CKDN2A, PALB2, PRSS1, STK11 and TP53 are associated with increased risk of pancreatic cancer.
Madison Marsh’s family. Photo: Whitney’s Race.
Jessica Everett, a genetic counselor at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, encourages people in this category to look into possible screening options.
“If you’re concerned about pancreatic cancer in your family, start by talking to a genetic counselor to learn more about your risk and what options you have,” Everett told SurvivorNet.
