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Let fellow motorists know that IN GEORGIA, LUNG CANCER MATTERS! Learn more and order here. 2/27/2012 Despite loss, former #AtlantaFalcons continues #lungcancer campaign, fund-raising.Read NowThis article was originally published by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on 2/27/2012 By Michelle E. Shaw The Atlanta Journal-Constitution For years, organizations such as Lung Cancer Alliance and the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health have dedicated countless hours and millions of dollars to educate the public about lung cancer and new developments in detection and treatment. Yet, as well-known as these entities are, their message often is overshadowed by other cancers, especially ones with higher survival rates such as breast cancer. Advocates say they need all the help they can get — from those who survive and the families of those who do not — to continue to raise awareness. “The way I look at it, there is no over-awareness right now, only under-awareness,” said Laurie Fenton Ambrose, president and chief executive of the Washington, D.C.-based Lung Cancer Alliance. “We need to combine forces and strategize about how we build a more compassionate and comprehensive approach.” Enter Chris and Keasha Draft and their Team Draft initiative, “Changing the Face of Lung Cancer.” The couple started the effort together, with the official launch at their wedding Nov. 27. The goal of the campaign is to raise funds to aid lung cancer research and education. But the task fell solely to Chris Draft after his 38-year-old wife died Dec. 27 on their one-month anniversary. Keasha Rutledge Draft never smoked and was an athletic woman. An electrical engineer by trade, she danced professionally for the Charlotte Hornet Honeybees, worked out regularly and paid attention to her overall health, her husband said. “She was doing some ballroom dancing, Latin dancing and she was getting ready to do a competition,” said Chris Draft, a former Atlanta Falcon. “But right at the beginning of December 2010, she said she had a little shortness of breath and she went and got checked out.” The visit to her doctor lead to a diagnosis of a late-stage lung cancer called adenocarcinoma, which begins in the cells that form the lining of the lungs. The condition accounts for just over 30 percent of lung cancer diagnoses, according to statistics from the Lung Cancer Alliance. The finding naturally led to speculation from outsiders about Keasha Draft’s health habits, her husband said. “That’s the stigma of lung cancer,” Chris Draft said. “Everybody wanted to know if she smoked. They’re trying to figure out how she got it. But she didn’t smoke.” The presumption that lung cancer is associated with smokers or exposure to second-hand smoke is a dangerous one, said Dr. Scott Kono, an assistant professor of medical oncology at Emory University’s medical school, who treated Keasha Draft. “Most people are not thought to be victims of cancer, but that they have cancer because of something they did,” he said. “Not all lung cancer patients smoke like the Marlboro Man.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lung cancer kills more people in the U.S. than any other type of cancer and is the second-leading cause of death behind heart disease. More than 20 percent of lung cancer cases are diagnosed in people who have never smoked, Ambrose said. “Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in every ethnic group,” she said. “And lung cancer has been the leading cause of death among women and surpassed breast cancer in the late 1980s.” The five-year survival rate for women with lung cancer was just under 19 percent in 2006, the latest data available from the National Cancer Institute. Other cancers survival rates were significantly higher. “We don’t have a big survivorship and that is why the onus is placed on the families of those who don’t survive,” Kono said. “And that is very hard for families. But what Chris is doing is raising awareness and saying, ‘This is not just a smoker’s disease.’ That is really important.” While Draft appreciates the acknowledgment, he’s focused on saving lives and changing the face of the disease. He knows what happened to his wife could happen to anyone, whether they have a history of smoking or not. “She knew it, too,” he said. “That’s why at the wedding she didn’t want gifts. She wanted people to donate to Team Draft.” It's not too late to become a sponor of the 5th Annual Dancing for Joan presented by Northside Hospital Cancer Care! If you or your business would like to join our list of sponsors, click here or call us at (404) 987-0792. We have very affordable packages available. To be included in the printed program of the event, you need to contact us by end of day on Friday, February 17th. You can check out our 2012 Sponsors here.
Sources: Global Cancer Facts and Figures, 2009–American Cancer Society, Lung Cancer Alliance, National Cancer Institute, SEER (Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results, Douglas Arenberg, MD, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, World Health Organization, Nature Review/ Sophie Sun/Joan Schiller/Adi F. Gazdar
This article was originally published by Si Cantwell on February 11th, 2012 at StarNewsOnline.com. Taylor Bell faced a dilemma Wednesday morning as she pondered that night's big basketball game. “I root for Carolina but Duke saved my life,” she said. Two weeks after her 21st birthday, she was told she had a 3-centimer mass in her lung. “I thought it was a death sentence for me,” she said. It wasn't. She had the cancerous mass removed at Duke University Medical Center and she's been cancer-free for more than four years. But Bell is exceptional: Only 16 percent of lung cancer patients live five years past diagnosis. Bell wants you to know two things about lung cancer.
“When I tell people I had lung cancer, the first question is, ‘Did you smoke?' ” she said. She thinks that's unfair. “You don't ask people with breast cancer, ‘How did you get breast cancer?' ” Bell played varsity soccer for four years at New Hanover. When she graduated in 2005, she expected to play soccer at East Carolina University. And she did during her freshman year. She began to feel a tingling and numbness in her toes. Then she couldn't pass her fitness test, a series of sprints she'd previously done without difficulty. Eventually she left the team.
During Christmas break her sophomore year, she contracted pneumonia, then got sick again a few weeks later. The student health center took a chest X-ray, which she recently brought to the StarNews for a photo session. But no one realized it was lung cancer until the following fall. “I was shocked and scared,” she said. Her grandmother had died of lung cancer, as had a great-grandfather and great-uncle. Bambi MacRae, a lung cancer survivor whom I wrote about last year, helped connect Bell with Duke thoracic surgeon Thomas D'Amico. “Keyhole surgery” pulled much of her left lung out through a small incision in November 2007. Since then, twice-yearly scans have proven negative for cancer. Bell, who graduated in 2010 with a B.S. in political science, has become an activist and advocate. She has appeared with D'Amico before medical providers, and traveled to Washington to lobby on behalf of lung cancer survivors. Lung cancer takes more lives than breast, prostate and colon cancers combined, according to the National Lung Cancer Partnership. But with the low survival rate, Bell said, “there's not a lot of people to talk about the story.” She said there's a stigma attached to lung cancer. People tend to assume that those who suffer from it are somehow to blame. Bell was a Division 1 college athlete. She'd never smoked and hadn't been exposed to secondhand smoke on a regular basis. But even if she had smoked, she said, “Does that make you care less? No one deserves lung cancer.” Bell works in Greenville as community outreach coordinator with the Carolina Well survivorship program (CarolinaWell.org), a Chapel Hill-based organization that supports cancer survivors. Her local counterpart is LaSonia Roberts-Melvin, who says New Hanover Regional Medical Center's Zimmer Cancer Center offers a program to help survivors transition to life after cancer. To find out more, contact Roberts-Melvin at 342-3403 or LaSonia.Roberts-Melvin@nhrmc.org. Copyright © 2012 StarNewsOnline.com 2/10/2012 Chris Draft Remembers: My Last Year With Keasha #lungcancer #teamdraft #essencemagazineRead NowBy Charli Penn of Essence magazine. This article was originally publshed at Essence.com on February 10th, 2012. On November 27, 2011, former NFL star Chris Draft married the love of his life, professional dancer LaKeasha Rutledge, in an intimate and beautiful wedding ceremony surrounded by loved ones. Exactly one month later, on December 27, his wife lost her brief battle with stage 4 lung cancer, and he sat by her side as she took her last breaths. When we shared Draft’s heartbreaking story with you, the outpouring of support and well wishes was tremendous. Then came your questions. What can you do to help? How could this happen? A healthy, 38-year-old woman whom friends described as a “fitness nut," Rutledge never smoked a day in her life. Her diagnosis came just a year before her death, and seemingly out of nowhere. Draft, who’s continuing his fight for a cure through their organization Team Draft, must now begin to heal. ESSENCE.com sat down with him to learn what the couple’s last year together was like, and how Draft's Valentine would have wanted to be remembered. ESSENCE.COM: Since your wife’s passing, you’ve shown such strength and shared so much of her life with the world. Why did you choose to share her story in this way? CHRIS DRAFT: We put the pictures up [online] so people could really see the life in her, not just how she passed away. We want people to see that her faith allowed her to live before her diagnosis, and to continue to live with it, and find the joy in each day. Even when you get bad news, you have to find the joy in life, which is definitely not easy. Most of the pictures in the montage people have seen are from the past year. She was still enjoying her friends, and still enjoying her family. Yes, it was a little different with cancer being there, but at the same time, you find a way to enjoy it. That’s where you’re at, you know? ESSENCE: You both stayed positive throughout her battle. How were you able to do that, after learning of her diagnosis? DRAFT: It was never, "Oh, I’m just going to smile through it." Keasha was like, “I’m going to fight. We’re going to do what we have to do to go after this.” Stage 4 lung cancer is not a good diagnosis. I mean, the numbers are horrible, and to get that news without even having a sign beforehand, makes it that much tougher. She knew she had great friends, and great family, and a great support system, and she said, “Okay, so what do I have to do to fight? We’re going to fight it each and every day.” Getting the full diagnosis, and knowing exactly what we were fighting, was a very hard process. She did such a great job of really looking at it like, "Hey, I have to do this in order to have a chance to be better." She stuck with that and continued to smile, even after she went to appointment after appointment ESSENCE: Share a favorite memory of your time with Keasha with us. DRAFT: I played an away game once, and she got three of her friends to help her bring this big ol’ live Christmas tree into my condo as a surprise. I came back from a long, tough day of playing, and I walk in, and I was like, "Oh my goodness." There was the most beautiful, perfect tree right there in my living room. It was the absolute example of what it means to actually be playing in the league and still have your woman right there with you, supporting you, and it was a tremendous feeling. When you're away sometimes your family can’t be there, or you travel for holidays and they have to come to you, but she made it where Christmas was there, and I was home. It was so beautiful. I was looking at the pictures the other day and the tree was so big -- actually bigger than I remember. She liked surprises. That same Christmas she put together this scrapbook for me that had pictures from the season, articles that talked about my community work, and photos from my family. It was perfect. The great thing about her was that she really paid attention to the little things. She appreciated all of who I am, not just me, the football player. ESSENCE: What types of things did you enjoy doing together? DRAFT: She’d find a new place to go to dinner, and be sure we went there, or we’d just take a romantic walk in the park -- as long as we were spending time together, that’s what mattered. I wouldn’t call us homebodies, but we definitely loved a good movie or meal. We’d always go to the movies or enjoy a meal together. If she was gonna cook, she’d cook from scratch, and really cook. She made the best red velvet cake ever. She added to her arsenal a carrot cake too. The red velvet was so good, it made you just want to eat a whole bunch of it. It’d have to be a special occasion for her to make one, though, because you just couldn’t have that much cake around – it was just too good. ESSENCE: Was your wedding day everything you dreamed it would be? You both looked so happy in your video. DRAFT: I wanted her to just be able to really enjoy it. That was my only focus. She was able to get up. She was able to walk. She was able to dance. Dancing was just her. Her 88-year-old grandmother got up at our wedding and she started dancing, and she got Keasha back up and she started dancing too. The weather was perfect. It was 70 degrees on Thanksgiving weekend – wow. It seemed like everything just worked itself out for her. It was so beautiful. Her friends and family were all able to be there. It was a good day -- a good weekend. ESSENCE: If you could send out a message to Keasha this Valentine’s Day, what would you want her to know? DRAFT: [Long pause.] Keasha, I‘ll always love you. We’re gonna keep fighting. We’re gonna keep fighting! We’re gonna keep inspiring people and help to change people’s lives, I promise. ESSENCE: How would she want you to live your life and honor her legacy? DRAFT: She wanted to be an inspiration to other people. She really wanted to try to make sure that people saw her for who she was and to see a woman with a beautiful spirit. I have to finish making sure everything is in order as I move forward. She would want me to be happy, to smile, and to move forward and stay close with her family and friends. That’s what I’m doing ESSENCE: What's next for Team Draft? DRAFT: Right now, with Team Draft our goal is to change the face of lung cancer. We want people to see that anybody can get lung cancer, and the cure for it is just as critical as breast cancer, or any cancer. We’ve got to find a way to identify it earlier. She was this strong, healthy woman, who was all of a sudden short of breath. Had she caught it during stage 3, instead of 4, it could have really increased her chances of survival. We’re going to celebrate her life and the type of person she was and we want others to grab hold of her spirit and make a difference. There’s no clear answer in terms of what can be done to identify it early enough. Keasha didn’t smoke, she was a dancer, she was fit, and she was healthy. That’s why people need to see faces like hers and continue to be inspired. We want to build an excitement about making a difference. I want to put a picture of Keasha right in front of researchers' faces, so when the doctors and scientists are doing their research, they see her right there smiling, and it can hopefully give them that little extra push. If we could push things ahead, and give someone else another week, it makes a huge difference. Team Draft was launched at our wedding. She wanted to fight. She wanted to stand up. Continuing this allows her to do that. Roughly 25 percent of lung cancer cases show no symptoms at all. For more information on lung cancer and to learn how you can help spread Rutledge’s message of hope, contact Team Draft today. Watch the ESPN feature here: http://www.gaetafund.org/keasha-rutledge-draft.html
Please watch this very powerful, very touching video produced by ESPN and originally aired during their Super Bowl XLVI pre-game coverage on February 5th, 2012. Respond and donate at www.teamdraft.org. No one deserves lung cancer.
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