Marine Sgt. Koren English discovered a lump on her body and launched into a fight that would last over a year. Her mom rushed to her side and her aunt arrived, fighting mad, to help. After four rounds of Red Devil chemo as well as special meals and even a birthday at the Fisher House, Koren is proving her strength once again at the 2024 DoD Warrior Games.
Marine Sgt. Koren English thrived in Japan on her first assignment, got sent to the Philippines en route home, and served with the elite 2nd Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. With such a strong record, it didn’t surprise anyone when the Marine Corps selected the young woman for Drill Instructor School.
Koren passed her final physical to check out of Camp Lejeune and head to school with flying colors, until she asked the doctor a final question.
“He’s in the doorway, he’s like, ‘Do you need anything else from me?’” Koren said. “I’m like, ‘Could you just check this lump out? I just noticed it a few months ago.’”
Koren said the first doctor didn’t seem overly worried and still signed off on her leaving base, but he scheduled Koren to a surgeon. After that was the radiologist, an ultrasound, a biopsy, and a mammogram. The series of tests revealed a malignant tumor in her left breast.
“I just went into shock. How do I get to my 22-year-old baby? How do I get to her? And at first, she wouldn’t let us come,” Koren’s mom Michelle English said.
Koren didn’t want her mom or other relatives paying for travel or hotels around Camp Lejeune, North Carolina where she served, even after she transferred to the Wounded Warrior Battalion.
Koren needed doxorubicin, a powerful drug known as “Red Devil Chemo” that taxes the heart and liver. Koren, who had spent her high school years running to the beach, covering herself in water and sand to become a “sugar cookie,” and running home, now struggled to make it to the chow hall, often settling for fast food delivery or convenience store food.
“All she was eating was like DoorDash and Uber Eats and stuff. She had no idea of the power of family. She had no idea how much she needed her mom until her mom got there,” Mary Pagan, Koren’s aunt, said.
Traveling from California to North Carolina was hard for Koren’s family.
“At first, it was a struggle financially, I mean huge, and then Fisher House stepped in,” Michelle said.
Camp Lejeune’s Fisher House manager at the time was Josie Cotton, and she was able to provide lodging for the family and request Hero Miles to take care of their flights.
“The first time, I was there for four months,” Michelle said. “You guys got me the flight, got me over there, and you made sure we had everything we needed.”
“When I went the first time, my husband came with me and I think we stayed for 10 days, and it was Koren’s last Red Devil. And what Fisher House allowed us to do for Koren was cook homemade meals for her. And she’s half-Filipino and my husband’s half-Filipino, so we cooked a lot of Filipino food for her, and her friends would come to the Fisher House and eat. She was so excited for them to have food that she grew up with.”
Koren’s mom made sure that she had her preferred foods right after chemotherapy appointments.
“I knew what she wanted to eat after her treatment, so I would go get that ahead of time,” Michelle said. “After I dropped her off—she didn’t want me to go in with her—she wanted a meal from a particular café, really wholesome food. I would have it waiting for her. Because of the Fisher House, we weren’t worried about where we would stay that night and we had the extra money to do that.”
“I'm telling you, once they got to the Fisher House, that last Rough Devil treatment was so much easier,” Koren said. “I was shocked. I was like, ‘I don't feel like crap today.’”
In addition to providing healthy food, Koren’s family helped her track the complicated medications that supported her chemo.
“The last Red Devil was supposed to be her worst chemotherapy of the four Red Devil rounds, and she said she never felt better because I was making her take her medication,” Mary said. “She stayed at the Fisher House the entire time with us. I had to sleep with my husband on a double bed, but that was okay.”
Koren, who is now cancer-free, is focused on staying a Marine and restoring her health, so she decided to engage in adaptive sports to help lose weight she gained due to her medications. Hero Miles was able to help again by flying her family out to support her at the 2024 DoD Warrior Games at ESPN Wide World of Sports near Orlando, Florida.
And her aunt and mother got to watch as she received her bronze medal for powerlifting and her silver medal for discus.
