Mike Hembree

Special for USA TODAY Sports

TALLADEGA, Ala. — The pre-race kiss, a staple of the last moments between a race car driver and significant other before the green flag drops, was especially poignant in the bright Talladega Superspeedway sunshine this month for driver Martin Truex Jr. and his long-time girlfriend, Sherry Pollex.

Pollex was at a race track for only the second time since she had surgery Aug. 15 for ovarian cancer, just one week after the diagnosis that rocked Truex, his Furniture Row Racing Sprint Cup team and many of the families in the tight neighborhood of the NASCAR drivers' motorhome compound.

With a large hat protecting her head from the sun, Pollex greeted friends, some of whom were seeing her for the first time since her diagnosis and surgery. It was more of a homecoming than an occasion for talking about the hard rains that had fallen on her life.

There was a short pit-road prayer, a final word between the two and another kiss. And Truex was off to the races, into the only place — the cockpit of a race car — he has been able to escape tough realities. Over the course of the Talladega afternoon, he led a lap for the first time in what has been a difficult season on-track in his first year with the tiny one-car team.

The sense of excitement and anticipation up and down pit road was palpable in the minutes preceding the final race in the second round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup as 12 drivers prepared to run to stay alive in the playoffs. For Truex, not in the championship running, it was simply a day to appreciate things were as they should be — his arm around his girlfriend, her head on his shoulder as race-day festivities swirled around them.

Life has been a complex web of hospital rooms, chemotherapy treatments and days and nights of dreading what might be next in their fight against Stage III ovarian cancer (IV is the most serious).

"We lived our life in fourth gear all the time," Pollex, 35, told USA TODAY Sports via telephone. "We were constantly running. I ran a business and Martin's foundation and travel full-time with him. I never stopped. So adjusting to a new normal and having to put your life in first gear and learn that your body can't run like that any more is the biggest adjustment for me."

It has been a particularly rough journey for Truex, who sees the ebbs and flows of a battle that will stretch far beyond laps, miles and seasons.

"It's been a rollercoaster ride," Truex told USA TODAY Sports from his Martin Truex Jr. Motorsports shop in Mooresville, N.C. "It changes daily. You go through all different emotions from sad to mad, why the hell, why us. But at the end of the day, we're no different from anybody else who's had cancer.

"At first, I was shocked. Thought I was dreaming. ... It puts things in perspective real quick. All this stuff I've been mad about before and thought was a big deal, it's nothing."

Truex and Pollex, a native of Michigan whose father, Greg, owned a NASCAR team from 1993 to 2006, met about eight years ago when she was working in racing public relations and he was working to build his career on-track. Their relationship grew quickly, and Truex, renting a house from then-teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr., moved in with Pollex. Later, they bought a house in Mooresville, N.C., near Lake Norman in a popular residential area for NASCAR families.

They've been a couple since, Truex winning two Nationwide Series championships and breaking into Sprint Cup victory lane while Pollex built relationships with other drivers' wives and girlfriends, opened a popular Mooresville boutique shop called Lavendar and helped Truex start the Martin Truex Jr. Foundation.

The foundation's emphasis over its seven-year life has been assisting children and families touched by pediatric cancer. Pollex has been one of the biggest boosters for Charlotte-area children facing surgeries and treatments.

Now, the disease she has been targeting for years has hit her.

'It was so hard'

Pollex said she began feeling ill in mid-summer and was certain something wasn't quite right. But doctor visits produced no solid diagnosis.

"She had gone to three or four doctors, and they couldn't figure out what was going on," Truex said. "This went on for a couple of months. ... Finally, we got her to a surgeon — a friend of a friend — in Lake Norman. He said right away, 'Let's do a CT scan.'

"They did the scan. Two hours later, he called and told us to come down to the office. Right away he told us, 'You have ovarian cancer.' "

Neither Pollex nor Truex knew anything about the disease, one that affects only about 22,000 women in the United States annually, according to the American Cancer Society.

They had just begun serious consideration of having their first child. Pollex said she initially thought she was sick because she might be pregnant.

"I had stopped taking birth-control pills," she said. "As soon as I had the CT scan and heard the diagnosis, I did ask if I could save my eggs. The doctor told me there was no time for that. He said, 'We have to get you to surgery in the next few days, or you're going to die.'

"There was no time to think about the fact that I was devastated that I could never be a mother. I don't know what hit me worse – the devastation that I couldn't carry my own child or the devastation that I had Stage III cancer. To hear all that in a matter of five minutes — it was so hard."

The operation lasted several hours. Pollex's appendix, spleen, ovaries, fallopian tubes and part of her stomach were removed.

"They pretty much took everything that I didn't need to survive because the cancer was everywhere," Pollex said.

She was hospitalized for eight days and four weeks later began weekly chemotherapy treatments that will last into January.

For Pollex, the road ahead is tough and uncertain.

"But cancer has never met someone like Sherry," Truex said. "She's very determined and hard-working. She will be the person that can change the way this all works for other women — for increasing awareness and helping other people not get in this position. That will be something she can really make a difference with. She will make stuff happen."

First, though, there is the goal of pushing the cancer into remission. After hearing the diagnosis, the couple sought information on the Internet, an avenue taken by many who receive bad medical news.

There they ran into the equivalent of an evil abacus, one spewing out negative numbers about survival rates and chances of recurrence.

"It's the worst thing you can do," Truex said. "It's hard not to. You want to know what's going on. But it was a nightmare. It was bad, very bad.

"Then you have people on social media who try to be nice, saying they're praying for you and they lost their mom to cancer five years ago. Why would you say that? Come on, people. Thanks for thinking of us, but you don't have to tell us your mom died. We're trying to be strong and think positive."

Pollex, who receives weekly chemotherapy treatments through a port in her stomach, said her reaction has been relatively mild, although she tires easily. She has lost her hair and several pounds in addition to the 22 she lost while hospitalized. She's anxious, she said, to put the treatments behind her and to work closely with the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance to promote awareness of a disease she said receives relatively little attention in the broader war against cancer.

She pointed out how the color pink paints much of the sports landscape in October during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. NFL players wear pink gloves, shoes and other items, and NASCAR race cars often carry pink paint schemes.

"September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, and the color is teal, but I never knew that," she said. "Now Martin runs the teal ribbon on his car every weekend. It's important for us to educate people. It's something that people are very naïve about, and we're going to try to change that. If I had been properly educated about my disease, it would have greatly changed my outcome. With earlier diagnosis, I would have had a survival rate of 85 percent. My survival rate now is less than 30.

"I don't know if I'm going to be here in five years. I don't know if I'm going to be here in two years. All I can do right now is fight and try to help other women so they don't make the same mistake.

"I'm a fighter. I'm not going to lie down and let it take me. To me, every day is a gift. I don't miss much. I'm making memories. I hope in the end I can come out healthy and spend the rest of my life educating women about this."

'She's a fighter'

Truex and Pollex have a strong network of friends and among the closest are driver Ryan Newman and his wife, Krissie.

"Sherry is like a sister to me," said Krissie Newman. "I try to be there as much as I can for her and Martin. Ryan and I try to be people they can lean on, run errands, whatever they need. It's kind of hard, at the same time. You don't want to be an overbearing person when they want space. But we do consider them family, so we do whatever we can possibly do to help.

"She's a fighter. She's so strong in her faith."

Truex, 34, said there was never a question in his mind about Pollex's response to what has been a difficult, emotionally charged challenge.

"She's tough, man," he said. "Damn tough. She broke her ankle a while back and limped around on it for a week. She thought she sprained it."

And she has to be.

"It's hard to go out in public," she said. "... There are some days I just want to go to Target and be normal. And I can't do that. But it feels like I've been through so much over the past few months that I'm just happy to be alive."

Furniture Row Racing general manager Joe Garone told team members the news in a morning meeting, and he said the team has rallied around the couple despite the cross-country nature of their relationship. Furniture Row is based in Denver. Truex landed there after the Chase fixing scandal at Michael Waltrip Racing last September eventually cost him a ride with the loss of sponsor NAPA.

"What I see is Martin putting that front up, as well, being there and being strong for her. We're doing that together. We feel that same way for him," Garone said.

After the diagnosis, team owner Barney Visser offered Truex the opportunity to skip the rest of the Sprint Cup season if his everyday presence at home would help.

Truex missed a practice and qualifying session at Michigan International Speedway to be with Pollex during and after her surgery.

"I did think about not racing the rest of the year," Truex said. "But I would go crazy. There's just no way I could do it. I missed one practice and one qualifying day, and I was spun the hell out.

"I need racing. It's like my drug."

Pollex and Truex continue to work on his foundation goals and in planning May's annual Catwalk for a Cause, its major fund-raiser. Catwalk is an evening fashion show that features NASCAR personalities wearing designer clothing, and children battling pediatric cancer also are part of the show.

Sandy Plemmons, executive director of the Truex Foundation, remembers Pollex interacting with one of the cancer patients, a Charlotte teen-ager named Madison, last year.

"Madison has leukemia and had lost all her hair and wore a wig," Plemmons said. "She had never been seen in public without it. Sherry told her, 'You're so beautiful. Let it shine. Let people see how beautiful you are.'

"Madison took off the wig and walked out on the runway, and the place just exploded in applause.

'This year,' Sherry said, 'I'll be standing on that stage with my babies and I'll know exactly what they've been through.' "

Follow Hembree on Twitter @mikehembree