Tracy Donaldson’s dressed in an outfit she purchased at the recent Gambler’s Sale at the Base Camp — Prana pants, a Life is Good fleece pullover and fuzzy Merrell clogs — the ones that look like they’d make your feet sweat if you weren’t standing in the Arctic tundra. When she sits down, her pants ride up just enough above her ankles to reveal a fabulous pair of green socks a friend of her mother’s knitted for her. Still, under all that fuzz and wool, Donaldson’s feet get cold.

If it weren’t for the way her wedding ring dangles from her thin finger as if it might slide off and the outline of the portal poking through the pale skin near her clavicle, you’d think she was hanging out in the waiting room of the St. Peter’s Cancer Treatment Center to keep a sick parent company.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Cancer is cruel to anyone who gets it, but when a 38-year-old mother of two young boys has cancer, it seems especially so. Breast cancer might have made more sense, given her family history. Donaldson had a baseline mammogram at the age of 35 to be a little more proactive. But who would have ever thought this fit, active woman would be diagnosed with stage IV rectal cancer the day Konnor, 5½, dressed as the red Power Ranger, and Luke, 2½, dressed as the Cookie Monster, waited for her to come home to take them trick-or-treating?

“That was the worst day so far,” Donaldson said last week while hooked up to a chemo drip. “I started gasping for air. I was in a daze.”

The diagnosis came after a colonoscopy that uncovered a tumor large enough to almost completely block her colon and subsequent bowel resection surgery. In hindsight, Donaldson knows she had symptoms of colon cancer for at least a year — blood in the stool, cramping, urgent need to sprint to a bathroom. But when you’re in your 30s, with a kindergartner and a toddler, who has time to think of the worst?

But that’s the thing Donaldson wants people to learn from her experience — you’re never too young to care about your health. Since her diagnosis, Donaldson has become aware of The Colon Club, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating as many people as possible as early as possible about colorectal cancer. Sounds like a noble enough cause, but The Colon Club founders take it a step further by using their youthful energy and creativity to make the lessons unique.

The Colon Club was founded in 2003 by Molly McMaster, a 28-year-old colon cancer survivor, and a 30-year-old woman named Hannah Vogler, whose 27-year-old cousin died of colon cancer. Part of their innovative colorectal teaching plans included building a 40-foot-long, 4-foot-tall model of a human colon. It’s called the Colossal Colon, or Coco for short. Those who crawl through the Colossal Colon can see what Crohn’s disease, diverticulosis, ulcerative colitis, hemorrhoids, cancerous and non-cancerous polyps, and various stages of colon cancer look like.

Donaldson and several of her friends formed a local support group called Friends Against Cancer, which is holding a fundraising event on Saturday night to raise money to help bring the Colossal Colon to Helena’s ExplorationWorks.

According to Liz Gundersen of ExplorationWorks, it will take about $10,000 to bring the Colossal Colon to Helena. The plan is to have Coco here for a week during an exhibit called “The Healer Within,” which is scheduled for spring 2007.

Ski for Colorectal Cancer Awareness 2006 will be held at the Great Divide from 6 to 11 p.m. For $25 per person, $45 per couple and $8 per child, participants can ski, eat pasta, dance to DJ music and bid on items in a silent auction.

Donaldson will be there. She should be feeling relatively well that day — it’s an off-week on her chemo calendar. Every other Wednesday, for the last four months, a nurse at the Cancer Treatment Center has hooked up Donaldson’s portal to a machine that delivers FOLFOX and Avastin into her veins. While her body absorbs the drugs, she sits in the reclining chair and records her intake in a diary. At first, Donaldson can carry on a lively conversation, but after 20 minutes or so, her fatigue becomes apparent.

“My body’s fighting a battle in there,” she says. “Cancer drugs aren’t discretionary about what they kill.”

A folded spreadsheet is tucked between the diary’s pages — it lists the names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of friends, acquaintances, family members, friends of family members and those who just want to make it easier for Donaldson and her sons and husband, Rick, to handle what used to be easy — cleaning, carpooling, shopping, cooking and playing. The group is unofficially called “The Booty Crew.”

Tara Mongoven, a crew member, has known Donaldson for about seven years. The two played softball together.

“I’ve seen her take balls to the shin or back and throw that person out at first base,” Mongoven said.

And for a woman that physically tough, you know it must be hard to accept help.

“Tracy needed help even though she didn’t want to say it,” Mongoven said. “She knew she needed it. We’ve had to sit with her and say, ‘No, you can’t do this or that; you need to go get your rest.’”

“I’m used to doing things with the boys,” Donaldson said. “Sometimes it’s hard to sit back and watch someone else play with them.”

But over the last year, even when Donaldson was at her lowest weight, 108 pounds — down from her normal weight of about 130 — she was never too weak to hold her children.

She keeps Konnor’s drawing of his interpretation of cancer treatment — figures of his mother, her circulatory system and cancer medicine eating away the cancer like Pacman.

Leanne West Simendinger has known Donaldson for about six years.

“We had our first babies together,” she said. “The first thing that came to my mind when I found out Tracy had cancer was probably the first thing that came to her mind — the thought of not being a mother to her two children.”

Stage IV rectal cancer means that the cancer has spread to other parts of Donaldson’s body — her lymph nodes and a small tumor in her right lung. She’s done enough research to quote the statistics: colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States; the American Cancer Society estimates that about 150,000 new cases of colorectal cancer will be diagnosed and 55,170 people will die of it in 2006.

But with the statistics, there is good news. According to ACS, the death rate from colorectal cancer has been dropping for the past 20 years; one reason is early screening — polyps are being found before they can develop into cancers. And treatments have improved. Because of this, there are around 1 million survivors of colorectal cancer in the U.S.

There is also scary news. The five-year relative survival rate for people whose colorectal cancer is treated in an early stage — before it has spread — is about 90 percent. The five-year survival rate refers to the percentage of patients who live at least five years after their cancer is diagnosed. Many of these patients live much longer than five years after diagnosis. But once the cancer has spread to nearby organs or lymph nodes, the five-year relative survival rate goes down.

When Donaldson heard the prognosis from a doctor in Seattle from whom she sought a second opinion, she, of course, thought of her boys.

“Luke will be in second grade in five years,” she said.

But for now, with only four more chemo treatments to go and her test results showing improvement, Donaldson is optimistic and looking forward to having her “normal life” back.

Her friends are looking forward to having her back too.

“In the next year, she’ll recover,” Simendinger said, as if doubt weren’t in the equation. “I certainly feel she’ll recover from this. She’ll be doing great things in the community. Her focus will be helping others.”

Donaldson does feel a calling to help educate as many people as she can about colorectal cancer.

“This is my mission,” Donaldson said. “It’s been a growth experience. There was a time when it was more terrifying. Leaving my kids is the scariest thing to think about. But nobody knows how many days they get. All the stuff we have control over is the small stuff. We have no control over the big stuff. And that’s kind of calming to think about.”

Fundraiser Saturday at Great Divide

Ski for Colorectal Cancer Awareness 2006 will be held at the Great Divide ski area on Saturday, March 11, from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Night skiing and snowboarding, $10 equipment rentals, pasta dinner, D.J. music and dancing, raffles, door prizes and a silent auction are planned.

Ticket prices in advance are $25 per person, $45 per couple and $8 for kids 5 to 12. (Kids 4 and under are free). Tickets are available at The Montana Book and Toy Co., The Real Food Store, The Man Store and Valley Bank. Tickets will also be available at the door for a slightly higher price.

Proceeds from the event go to Friends Against Cancer, a Helena-based, non-profit organization dedicated to increasing early detection of colorectal cancer by promoting awareness and education about the disease, advocating better health

and assisting in the fight against cancer in our community.

For more information, contact Tracy at 475-9599.