They call her the Energizer Bunny: Bettye Balland Griffin is one of those enviably efficient humans who can oversee two rental properties, hunt down just the right antique for an interior design client, move from a large Victorian house in Hunt Valley to a one-bedroom apartment in Parkville and still find time to make her special baked beans for a pot-luck supper.

What's more, Bettye Griffin is also living with inoperable kidney cancer.

On Saturday, she will join thousands of other cancer survivors, their families and friends at an unprecedented national rally in Washington to call for more money to prevent and treat the disease. This year the National Cancer Institute will spend $2.5 billion on cancer research.

"The March ... Coming Together to Conquer Cancer" will celebrate the millions of Americans who are living with cancer, as well as pay tribute to the estimated 560,000 who die of it each year.

For Griffin, this rally is part of a journey begun 11 years ago when she discovered she was ill. She has prevailed through a decade of dire prognoses and life-threatening surgeries. The inoperable tumor pressing against her spinal cord could kill her at any time. But at this stage, she is not easily flustered.

"I'm apt to make jokes -- 'I'll be going into the hospital now, I'll be home later' -- that's how I feel about my disease," she says. "I don't dwell on it.

"When you've had cancer, particularly this long, things happen gradually. It isn't like you wake up one day and you're deathly ill. Today, for instance, I'm walking really well. Some days I use a cane because I bump into things. If I don't feel so hot, I always think I'm going to feel better tomorrow. And usually I do."

Her history with cancer began suddenly in 1987 when Griffin, an interior designer, discovered blood in her urine. After she was diagnosed with kidney cancer, an unpredictable, usually deadly disease that afflicts about 29,900 Americans each year, surgeons removed one kidney and the adrenal gland near it.

At the time, life was good: Divorced for many years, Griffin was dating the retired army officer who would become her second husband. And after the struggle of raising a daughter as a single parent, she was enjoying the more relaxed role of being a grandparent.

After surgery, life returned to normal. Then in 1991, Griffin had her other adrenal gland removed. The next year, surgeons removed a tumor from the kidney bed area. In 1995, surgeons had to remove part of her remaining kidney.

Then she began to have trouble with her balance.She developed a tremor in her left arm and began to feel strange pains in her head.

In fall 1996, a scan revealed the source: The cancer had spread to the spinal cord in her neck area. Surgeons removed as much of the tumor as they could, replaced bone and prescribed radiation.

After each setback, Griffin continued working, often driving more than 100 miles a day for consultations. She took her grandsons, who lived near Washington, to baseball games and state fairs. After her first surgery, she remarried. By the time she had her third surgery, however, she knew it was time to leave the relationship.

Since then she's lived alone. Last summer she moved into Oak Crest Village life-care community to preserve her independence as her health deteriorates. At this point, her condition is stable but fragile: If the tumor on her spinal cord moves a fraction of an inch, she could suddenly die. She usually wears a neck collar to immobilize the area.

Griffin's friends and family say her steadfast resilience, her ability to find humor in her situation, has shown them how to face illness with courage and grace.

Bettye Griffin and Gloria Toye have been friends for 60 years. Last year, they celebrated their friendship at Phillips hotel on the boardwalk in Ocean City.

"We rocked on the porch in those big old-timey chairs and listened to our music, music from the '40s," says Toye. "There was one time Bettye said, 'The doctors don't have much hope.' And I said, 'Don't let yourself think you're going to leave me here in this world!' We accept her illness. And we go on."

Toye knew Griffin back when she was a schoolgirl in the Forest Park section of Baltimore. Griffin went on to graduate from the Maryland Institute of Art in the '40s, then worked as a decorator in Palm Beach, Chicago and San Francisco before returning to Baltimore. After her first marriage ended, she worked hard to build up a client base while also raising her daughter. Griffin and Toye, who now lives in Salisbury, stayed close through it all.

"Bettye is the strongest strong-willed person I have ever met," says Toye. "She has survived because she does not give in! She tells me that some mornings she cannot get out of bed, but she makes herself take a shower and get going."

Griffin doesn't mention much about her cancer to Toye -- she doesn't want to burden friends and family. To talk about her cancer, she relies upon her newest friends: fellow cancer patients who comprise her weekly support group at the Wellness Community, an organization in Towson that offers free psycho-social services to men and women with cancer.

"Some people say to me, 'Why do you want to go some place like that where everybody's sick?' But it's not a down group!" Griffin says. "We all talk about family, treatments, problems, anything ...

"Many of the people have been through a lot more than I have, although maybe not for such a long time. They are such fighters, looking into every treatment, every avenue. One of the ladies is only in her 50s. She has everything to live for, a wonderful family, everything. Why should I complain?"

She never does, her friends say.

"Bettye's realistic, but optimistic," says Mary Faulkner, who is confronting a recurrence of cancer.

"There are some people in the group who are definitely 'uppers' and Bettye's one of them."

The program director of the Wellness Community, psychotherapist Tom Large, says people in cancer support groups often minimize their own problems by focusing upon comrades in worse shape.

"You would think that these people would each think they're at the bottom, but instead they tend to look around at others and feel it's 'There but for grace of God,' " he marvels. "And out of that they get some strength."

Recently Griffin bent over to pick up something in her storage locker, and was incapacitated by a strange feeling in her head.

"And I mean really strange," she says. "I had to stand there about five minutes until I could get myself together just from bending over. But I had not been wearing my collar for a couple of days and had been complaining about light-headedness. [My doctor] thinks when I move my head certain ways, the tumor in my neck is very close to an artery and it presses against it and decreases the blood flow."

Stories like that worry Griffin's family. Her daughter, Nancy Murray -- who offered her mother a kidney early on -- son-in-law, Patrick Murray; and grandsons Derek Inman and Skyler Saar live in Washington Grove, outside of Washington, D.C.

Saar, now a college freshman, was a junior in high school when his grandmother told him her cancer had spread.

"She was having problems, but she made a promise to me that she would make it to my high school graduation," he says. "She put all her effort in it. And it was unbelievable to see her there!

NB "Meem's taught me the value of time -- and of being with her."

On Saturday morning, Bettye Griffin will climb onto a bus charted by the American Cancer Society to go raise public awareness about people living with cancer.

"A lot of cancer patients feel that if the pharmaceutical companies would just band together in some way, maybe progress would be made," she says.

Although not necessarily in time to benefit her.

"When I got radiation, the doctor said, 'You have to remember it's in your bloodstream, which is like being on a highway. It can get off any place it wants.'

"I said, 'Well, that's encouraging!' But the doctors have been very frank with me and that's the way I've wanted it to be."

Griffin has learned to "live smartly, but not too defensively." What matters, she says, are her friendships and devoting more time to them.

What matters is to keep moving forward.

Griffin has enrolled in a computer lab to learn about the Internet, e-mail and "whatever it is you do on the computer." Next month, she'll take a course in "contemporary issues." And she has already collected entertaining tales about her new neighborhood.

"This has been such a big change," she says, looking around her small, tastefully appointed apartment. "I think it will be the best place for me. I'll be able to entertain here and I'll be able to -- well, I just don't know yet! It's a whole new way of life, and I hope I'm around another couple of years to enjoy it."

'The March'

"The March . . . Coming Together to Conquer Cancer" is the first mass demonstration against cancer to include groups inside and outside the cancer community. It was conceived in April 1997 when cancer survivors pledged to begin a national grassroots campaign to conquer cancer during CNN's "Larry King Live" show. It will feature two days of events in Washington:

Tomorrow: One-hour candlelight vigil at 7: 30 p.m. at the Lincoln Memorial honoring those who have lost their lives to cancer as well as survivors.

Saturday: Symposium of experts discussing the latest cancer research and treatment will run from 9 a.m. to noon on the mall. There will also be a tent with children's activities.

Saturday: Rally begins at noon in front of the Capitol. Among the speakers: Vice President Al Gore, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and cancer survivors Sam Donaldson, ABC news; Scott Hamilton, Olympic skater; and Michael Milken, founder of the Association for the Cure of Cancer of the Prostate. Singers Aretha Franklin, Michael Bolton, David Crosby and Graham Nash perform.

Call: 1-877-THE-MARCH (toll free)

Pub Date: 9/24/98