Somerville woman survives 9/11, two cancers to ride first Pan-Mass Challenge
Almost 22 years after Kathy Ball-Toncic ran barefoot from the North Tower on 9/11, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. While her team at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute cannot, definitively, link her disease to the toxic dust she inhaled as she fled the World Trade Center site, she is part of the WTC Health Program. To date, it says more than 44,000 people who were exposed to the WTC site-on or after 9/11--have been diagnosed with cancer.
In 2001, Kathy was commuting between Boston and New York and working on Wall Street. The morning of September 11, she had helped organize a conference at Windows On The World and was in a meeting in the lobby when the first plane hit the tower. At first, no one knew what had happened. She remembers a roar that sounded much like a subway train and flickering lights. She and her colleagues were standing up, pushing papers into their bags, when she heard a BOOM!
She remembers the explosion and the glass shattering in businesses along the first-floor concourse. Kathy and her colleagues were "dressed up" for their meeting. In the moments after the explosion, one of them didn't feel that Kathy was moving quickly enough-probably because she was in shock. He urged her to take off her heels and run from the building. With bare feet, over broken glass, she did.
Blocks later (she thinks they were about halfway to Broadway) they stopped. "We stopped and turned around just in time for the second plane to hit. And my memory of that morning is a little bit like a film that's missing a few frames," Kathey said. "But I vividly remember when we turned around and the building in flames... I pointed to it and said, 'We were in there.'"
By the time the group arrived at their office, Kathy's feet were bleeding, and she was covered in a thin layer of dust. She remembers feeling fortunate to have escaped and that night, to have been able to return home to Boston.
Processing the trauma of the attacks took a lot of intentional, emotional work. There was also a physical component to Kathy's emotional healing. After 9/11 Kathy, who'd been a runner for years, began running marathons for charity. "It really felt like a wonderful way to be able to give back, to do something meaningful," Kathy said.
The 2002 Boston Marathon was her first. Running was a way to celebrate her health, nourish, friendships, process difficult emotions, and raise money for organizations she believed in. In 2014, the year after the Boston Marathon bombings, she ran for Dana-Farber.
Cancer diagnoses
Her breast cancer diagnosis in 2023 was shocking enough. Kathy was treated at Dana-Farber for a full year. The following February, right around her birthday, she celebrated being cancer free. In a photograph with her son Henrik and daughter Maja, she is beaming as she holds a cupcake. That sense of elation, though, was short-lived. Two weeks later, she was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. (Breast cancer and colorectal cancer are two of the almost-70 cancers that have been traced to 9/11 exposure.) She had surgery and chemotherapy.
As someone for whom exercise and physical activity are so important, Kathy recalls her exhaustion at the end of 2024. "The chemo took everything out of me ... I remember lying on the couch thinking, I'm a business owner who's not working," Kathy said. "I'm a chef who can't eat. And I'm an athlete who can't make it up a flight of stairs who am I?"
She answered that question by focusing, minute-by-minute, on healing and small victories. Knowing when to give herself grace. Knowing when to ask for help. "I'm someone who's fighting and I'm someone who is visualizing health and wellness," she said.
During radiation, she visualized that the treatments were working. In early 2025, still healing from those treatments, Kathy knew that running a marathon was out of the question. But desiring a goal, she asked her doctor (Dr. Brandon Huffman) and physical therapist whether she could ride the Pan-Mass Challenge, an event to which she had donated for years. "They both emphatically said yes and were super supportive!" she said.
Kathy, who works as an executive leadership coach and facilitator, is riding the two-day PMC route from Wellesley to Provincetown. She hopes, with some nervousness, that she will be able to ride the entire route. Those who know her have little doubt. Henrik is a registered volunteer in Bourne and Provincetown. Asked about his mother's decision to take on this new challenge on her bike, he says what she brings to the ride makes him proud. "Grit and determination and perseverance and love and honor and all these wonderful characteristics that make her who she is," Henrik said.
While she does not miss cancer treatment, she does miss her team at Dana-Farber. "They are so extraordinary," Kathy said. "I think it's a part of cancer. People don't talk about a lot, that you finish your treatment.... And there's a bit of 'now what?' And you are not regularly seeing your care team." She says she will think about them while she is riding.
Kathy is again cancer free. She has regular check-ups, and her team promises to watch her "like a hawk." The colorectal cancer she survived has a high recurrence rate. But she says smiling, "it doesn't know who it's messing with."
PMC Living Proof rider
A few weeks before the PMC, Kathy enjoyed an experience that offered a new feeling of community. Smiling and flexing a well-toned bicep in a PMC t-shirt at Fenway Park, she was among the Living Proof riders (cancer survivors) who rode the warning track and paused for the national anthem and a standing ovation.
It was PMC Night at Fenway and the ballpark was full of fans. "They announced, 'These are the cancer survivors riding the PMC.' I almost wanted to look around and say, 'Who-like--who are the cancer survivors?' And it's like, it's me!" That realization came with a flood of emotions. "I burst into tears at first. And then I just, I thought I want to be here. I want to take this moment in."
She now looks ahead to the ride and imagines it will feel like a victory lap. "It's a way to celebrate all the people that have supported me. It's a way to celebrate my health," she said. "And it's a way to do whatever I can to make sure people don't have to go through this by raising money for research."
"We are all touched by this horrible thing called cancer," Kathy said.
