Leigh Calvez overcomes a

potentially deadly strep infection.

Exactly two years after she began relearning to walk, Leigh Calvez crossed the finish line of the Seattle Half Marathon.

“At first I was thrilled,” Calvez said of her achievement. “But, I’m hard on myself, so now I don’t see it as such a big deal.”

For Calvez, an 11-year resident of Bainbridge Island, completing the half-marathon on Nov. 26 was just another step towards her ultimate goal of running the Paris Marathon this coming April.

The 40-year-old runs five days a week and completes weekend workouts with Team in Training, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s endurance sports training program that raises funds for leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma research and patient services.

Through Team in Training, Calvez said she hopes to raise $6,000 dollars in sponsorships and donations for the Society.

“I am very excited to be celebrating my life in such a way that I may contribute to others living and celebrating theirs,” she said.

In October 2004, Calvez was diagnosed with a Group B streptococcus infection, a potentially deadly infection that in rare cases attacks adults with a lowered immune system. The infection quickly spread to her bloodstream and left Calvez in a coma for two weeks.

“I got sick really quickly,” she said. “My friend drove me to Winslow Clinic, and that was the last thing I remember.”

New celebrity

When she awoke two weeks later in Seattle’s Virginia Mason Hospital, Calvez found herself unable to walk, speak or drink water.

“It took a long time to be able to squeeze the doctor’s hand,” she said. “The scariest thing was how quickly my body went downhill.”

She spent the next month in intensive care, undergoing therapy to relearn the most basic skills required for living.

“During my first physical therapy session the therapists were moving my limbs and I had no control,” Calvez said. “That was when I realized how far I had to go.”

With such a long road ahead, she recalled how thankful she was to have the support of her family and friends. Her family practically lived at the hospital and Bainbridge community members came to see her “in droves.”

“The nurses wondered whether I was a celebrity, I had so many phone calls and visitors,” she said.

After spending a month in intensive care, Calvez was finally ready to return home.

However, returning home meant balancing the difficulties of rehabilitation with the challenges of being a mother to her daughter, Ellie, then 1.

Calvez took advantage of the situation and learned from her daughter.

“Ellie and I learned to walk together,” she said. “I saw how she would fall and always get back up, and I learned from her to be persistent.”

It was this attitude of perseverance that led Calvez to push beyond full recovery – which she uncannily achieved one year after her initial hospitalization– and rekindle her old zeal for running.

The idea of completing a marathon first came to Calvez during a weekend retreat led by Landmark Forum, an organization that focuses on life education for adults.

Someone mentioned they had trained for a marathon in just six months, and what a positive experience it had been. Calvez remembered her former passion for running and thought the event would be a good goal.

The retreat did more than just inspire her to train for a marathon; it helped Calvez appreciate the beauty of her own life.

“It put me in touch with what a gift life is,” she said. “I was able to appreciate how great it was to be able to go out and run because I knew what it was like to lose that.”

Not content with just training for a running event, Calvez is also busy organizing the Not Too Small 5K, a walk/run for adults and children around Battle Point Park on Jan. 13, and writing a memoir of her life that focuses on her illness and recovery.

For all of her struggles, Calvez considers herself lucky.

“The experience saved my life. I had stopped seeing the beauty of the world,” she said. “Now I look at the world with wonder, the way Ellie looks at it.”