Marcy Scott is the public relations director at Atlanta Motor Speedway. She is battling breast cancer. And she is indomitable. These days she doesn’t just notice others that need help; she seeks them out. Her priorities have shifted dramatically. At this point, the rat race wouldn’t even qualify as mall-walking. Facing an uncertain future — staring death square in the eye and refusing to blink — has that effect on a person. And that’s exactly what Scott, 38, is doing. She’s staring a hole through it. And she’s winning. She’s always been a selfless person. I [Marty Smith] met Marcy in the late ’90s [Jayski met her at CMS in May 2004], when she represented ppc Racing and driver Jeff Green, and handed out NesQuik chocolate milk coupons with her weekly press release. She always smiled and asked about my wife, Lainie. Every time. That didn’t change when she migrated to Bill Davis Racing or PPI Motorsports, or when she headed home to Atlanta to work at AMS. At Atlanta she was overworked. Her department was understaffed, and the burden of picking up the slack fell her way. Others helped, certainly. (She made sure I noted that.) But she was the name on the press releases and in the contact book, so she was the fire extinguisher. PR is as much about coddling as it is about information. That’s just the truth. As a result, the job began to define her. She was an “impatient perfectionist,” and her life was out of balance. Like many career-driven folks, she put the job first and herself second. Or third. Or last. No more. “That’s gone,” she said. “It’s not worth it. I feel like I’ve been given a gift. I’d never change this ride. Do I want to do it over? No. Do I want to have a mastectomy? No. Do I like standing here right now with boy hair and one boob? No. But it doesn’t matter. Do I like how I look? No. But it doesn’t define me. I won’t let it define me.” Marcy was diagnosed in June. Like most folks who hear the words “You have cancer,” she was ill-prepared for the news. No one, nothing, can prepare you for that sentence. It literally brought her to her knees. The information hit her like a freight train, in overwhelming abundance. She would need chemotherapy, four months’ worth. Radiation, too, six weeks’ worth, every day. She would require surgery following chemo to remove her breast, and when the chemo and radiation was over, a hysterectomy to remove the risk of ovarian cancer.
Countless people contacted Marcy after her diagnosis. She was appreciative, but it didn’t take long to become overwhelmed with telling the same story again and again. She created a blog to spill her thoughts, frustrations and triumphs — and only say it once. It is a harrowing account of her journey. In the latest installment she discusses how depressed she was just before Christmas, feeling “battered and bruised due to the pain of the surgery and multiple complications.”
Next up for Marcy is the Kobalt Tools 500 this weekend, and on Wednesday she’ll have that hysterectomy. In telling me about it, she choked up. Then she giggled a bit. “I was going through chemo, and standing at the elevator one day,” she said. “And someone was standing there complaining about, ‘I’m just so tired.’ You want to stab them. Do you really know what tired is? I’ll show you tired. You can’t expect everyone to have the perspective. It takes a lot of patience. Until you have that perspective you don’t get it. I used to be one of those people. That’s OK. I’m not there anymore.”(in part, see the full article with more quotes at ESPN.com by Marty Smith)(3-5-2010)
