5/30/2012 ATTN: #BayArea #Golfers! Sports Celebs to Tee Off on #LungCancer at #Millbrae, #CA EventRead NowOriginally published on the Millbrae Patch by Gideon Rubin - May 30th, 2012 Proceeds from the Seventh Annual Lung Cancer: Drive It off the Earth Golf Tournament, will benefit the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation. The event will be held on June 11 at Green Hills Country Club. Two NFL players and an award winning Bay Area sports anchor will be among the special guests who will appear at a charity golf tournament in Millbrae next month. Wide receiver Hank Baskett, linebacker Chris Draft and KGO-TV's Mike Shuman will participate in the Seventh Annual Lung Cancer: Drive It off the Earth Golf Tournament on June 11 at Green Hills Country Club. Baskett has played for three teams in a six-year NFL career that includes an appearance in the 2010 Super Bowl with the Indianapolis Colts. Baskett co-stars in the reality show "Kendra" with his supermodel wife, Kendra Wilkinson. Draft played for Stanford and has been on seven teams in a 13-year NFL career including a stint with the 49ers in 1999. Shumann, himself a former NFL player whose six-year career included two stints with the 49ers, has become a Bay Area radio and television broadcasting fixture whose distinguished career includes winning an Emmy for anchoring KGO-TV. The event will also feature "Hooked on Golf" radio program creator Mitch Juricich. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation. For more information contaact: golf@lungcancerfoundation.org.
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5/29/2012 @thehankbaskett Teamed Up With @bonniejaddario To Host His Inaugural Golf Classic on May 21, 2012 #lungcancerRead NowBy Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation Published: Tuesday, May. 29, 2012 - 2:09 am SAN FRANCISCO, May 29, 2012 -- NFL Wide Receiver Takes on Biggest Fight of His Life for His Father and Rallies a Star-Studded Team of Players to Tackle Lung Cancer SAN FRANCISCO, May 29, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- For NFL wide receiver Hank Baskett, Lung Cancer is personal. On May 21, the former Minnesota Vikings player rallied a star-studded list of Hollywood and athletic celebrities to host his inaugural Hank Baskett Classic Golf Tournament, saying he was launching his "biggest challenge ever," to wage a war on this #1 killer cancer. He's fighting on behalf of his father who is being treated for Lung Cancer. Teaming up with the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation, a recognized global leader in Lung Cancer research and awareness, Baskett rallied an A-Team of about 25 celebrities to play in the tournament held at Trump National Golf Club, Rancho Palos Verdes, California, on Monday, May 21, 2012. Celebrities included: Alfonso Ribeiro, Antonio Pierce, Jermaine Dye, Kris Humphries, Marcellus Wiley and his wife Kendra Wilkinson and two-year-old son, Hank IV. "It was amazing to see all these beautiful people coming out to fight against Lung Cancer and how they brought such a heightened awareness, respect and caring in a powerful way," said Bonnie J. Addario, founder and Lung Cancer survivor. "Hank's father is a big warm hug of a guy and is determined to fight the fight." Joining his son at the golf tournament, Henry Randall "Hank" Baskett, Jr. of New Mexico was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer last fall. Spending much of his career in the Air Force, he has spent the last 16 years helping abused children through a social service agency he runs. "You can see why his son is following in his footsteps and has such an impact in leading others to fight the fight on Lung Cancer," Addario added. "Everyone at the tournament told us 'when Hank calls, we come.' And, Hank told us that if we love what he did at this golf tournament in just three months, we will love to see what he can do in the next year." Through working with the Foundation, Baskett is determined to make a difference in the battle against Lung Cancer. The statistics are grim: 1.6 million people worldwide will be diagnosed with Lung Cancer this year. Only 15.5% will survive. "You can see the passion Bonnie has and that is one of the many reasons why I chose to work with the Foundation," said Baskett following the tournament. Baskett will join the Foundation again on June 11, 2012 for its Seventh Annual "Lung Cancer: Drive It off the Earth" Golf Tournament to be held at Green Hills Country Club in Millbrae, CA. About the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation BJALCF is one of the largest philanthropies (patient-founded, patient-focused, and patient-driven) devoted exclusively to eradicating Lung Cancer through research, early detection, education, and treatment. The Foundation works with a diverse group of physicians, organizations, industry partners, individuals, survivors, and their families to identify solutions and make timely and meaningful change. BJALCF was established on March 6, 2006 as a 501© (3) non-profit organization. www.lungcancerfoundation.org SOURCE Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/29/4522253/hank-baskett-teamed-up-with-the.html#storylink=cpy 5/17/2012 Donna Summer: #LungCancer Leading Cause of #Cancer Death @bonniejaddario @joegaeta @teamdraftRead NowBy Eryn Brown Orginally publshed by the Los Angeles Times on May 17, 2012, 3:16 p.m. Disco legend Donna Summer, 63, died Wednesday night, reportedly of lung cancer. As of press time, her family hadn’t released details about her illness, so it was unknown what type of lung cancer she had, and how long she may have been ailing. According to the American Cancer Society, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in both women and men, killing more than 150,000 people per year -- more than colon, breast, ovarian and prostate cancers combined. In 2012, the group estimates, there will be about 226,000 new cases of lung cancer in the U.S. Survival rates of people with lung cancer are low. Only about half of people diagnosed with early-stage non-small-cell lung cancer (the more common type) survive five years or more after diagnosis; many lung cancer cases aren't discovered until late in the disease's progression, however, because symptoms often don't arise until the disease is advanced. The risk of developing lung cancer increases with age, but it’s not unheard of for relatively young people to die from the disease. Joe Paterno died of lung cancer at 85; Peter Jennings at 67; Christopher Reeve's widow, Dana, at 44. According to some news reports, Summer hoped to keep her medical condition under wraps. The reasons why are unknown -- but according to Rachel Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the Lung Cancer Foundation of America, it’s not unusual for people with lung cancer to feel ashamed of having the disease, because it is so closely associated with a negative behavior: smoking. "Many famous people who have lung cancer never disclose this fact, which speaks to the huge stigma of this disease," Schwartz wrote in an email. "The stigma of the disease is crushing and any announcement of a lung cancer diagnosis is often accompanied by an assumption that you somehow brought the disease upon yourself." Smoking is the leading risk factor for lung cancer, causing about 90% of the cases, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But about 60% of new lung cancer patients either never smoked or haven’t smoked for many years, Schwartz said. Reeve was a non-smoker; Jennings a 20-year former smoker who admitted to relapses here and there. Second-hand smoke is a known carcinogen. A Web search did not reveal if Summer smoked. News outlets reported Thursday that she believed she developed lung cancer after breathing in dangerous particles in the air in the aftermath of New York's Sept. 11 attacks. Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times Lung Cancer "Living Room" Support GroupIf you are a newly diagnosed lung cancer patient, or a patient in any place in your diagnosis and you are looking for support, patient education and empowerment, help in obtaining second opinions with some of the foremost thought leaders in the world, or just need an informed ear to bend, contact Danielle Hicks, Director of Patient Advocacy at The Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation (BJALCF), to learn more. This monthly support group welcomes patients, survivors, families and friends. The hope is that during the time together, we will share stories, talk through difficulties, give advice that only someone who really knows can give, raise awareness and offer support. The group also features guest speakers and some of the foremost thought leaders in the world on lung cancer.
The Lung Cancer "Living Room" meets on the third Tuesday of every month in San Carlos, CA. However, anyone one can join and participate from anywhere in the world via live streaming and chat on UStream. For more information on attendig in person or via UStream, contact Danielle. Last night, I attended my first "Living Room" session from my laptop in the kitchen of my home outside Atlanta, Georgia. I was amazed at what a wonderful and effective resource this is - from an emotional as well as an informational perspective. You will not be dissapointed. Joe Gaeta President - The Joan Gaeta Lung Cancer Fund (an affiliate of BJALCF) 5/13/2012 This #MothersDay, Let's Remember That #LungCancer is a "Contemporary Epidemic #in American Women"Read NowWomen who smoke or used to smoke do not deserve lung cancer. No one does.
Lung cancer is the #1 cancer killer of women. It accounts for 1 of 4 cancer deaths among women, killing more each year than breast, uterine and ovarian cancers combined. In the U.S., 17,000 women who had never smoked in their lives die from lung cancer each year. This is over four times the number of cervical cancer deaths. The rate of lung cancer among women has risen 60% since 1990. It surpassed breast cancer as the #1 cancer killer of women in 1987. 31,000 more women die each year from lung cancer than from breast cancer. Learn more about women and lung cancer in this groundbreaking report. Remember to honor your mother today and everyday.... 5/9/2012 Woman w/ #lungcancer aims to end #stigma associated w/ the disease by getting on @TheEllenShowRead NowThis article was originally published on www.ksby.com on May 9th, 2012. by Carina Corral A Lompoc resident has terminal lung cancer, even though she never smoked a day in her life. Now, Mary Anne Rios now aims to end the stigma associated with lung cancer and her mission involves Ellen DeGeneres. She has a lot of fond memories of her family, friends and years as a counselor at Lompoc High School. She would like one of her last to be of dancing on the Ellen Show. "I can't find anybody to support lung cancer because there's such a stigma on it.. She's so tolerant and accepting of so many people that maybe she would do this." An on-line petition has been started to get Mary Anne on the Ellen Show. In just a short time, it has collected thousands of signatures. "I just don't want anyone else to go what I went through, misdiagnosed, because my story is not unique." Mary Anne is not a smoker and no one in her family is, so she said doctors never thought her chronic cough, hoarseness, and a lump in the back of her neck could be lung cancer. They were wrong. "The biggest problem with lung cancer is that it's the least funded and the number one killer.. I've had to tell so many medical personnel about the symptoms of lung cancer and I shouldn't be the ones telling them they should be telling me." It went untreated for so long, it spread to her brain and spine. Doctors don't give her much longer to live. "I call it my bucket wish list because of the movie The Bucket List." Mary Anne has checked many things off her list that include meeting Kurt Russell and going to Disneyland with her family. "I want to ride in a limo bus, a dancing one with my friends, and I want to make it to my birthday and dance with my husband," Mary Anne said of the items on her list that remain unchecked. Dancing with Ellen also tops the list. She wants it to be a fun way to spread her important message, "that anyone with lungs can get lung cancer." Mary Anne is trying to raise money and awareness for lung cancer research. On her own, she has already raised $20,000 by organizing walks and vigils in Lompoc. Click here to sign the online petition to get Mary Anne on the Ellen Degeneres show. © 2012 KSBY.com by Rick Montgomery
This article was originally published in the Kansas City Star on May 5th, 2012. A pesky cough, that's all. The last thing on Michaelle Gall's mind was late-stage lung cancer. She had just turned 41. She was a physically fit mom and nonsmoker, except for the rare social occasions when some friends might light up. What created the Lenexa woman's tumors is a mystery. It's that way each year for tens of thousands of Americans, mostly women, who defy the conventional profile of a lung cancer patient. With smoking rates plummeting and U.S. deaths to lung cancer dropping, research shows that roughly one in five women now diagnosed seldom, if ever, put a cigarette to their lips. The same is thought to be true for about one in 10 men. Only in recent years have scientists begun to explore why. For Gall, the coughing that arose around Christmas led to a doctor visit in January. "I turned 41 that month and less than a month later, I find out I'm a lung cancer survivor." Added Gall, upbeat in manner but still adjusting to the shock: "I say 'survivor' because a nurse told me that now I know I have it, I should consider myself a survivor." Her treatment is just beginning, and doctors are hopeful she'll benefit from a new drug that targets a genetic abnormality found in Gall and a small percentage of other cancer patients. The larger question, yet to be answered, is why lung cancer not linked to a history of smoking appears more apt to strike women than men. The peripheral hazards would seem just as dangerous to men: exposure to radon gas in the basement, or to asbestos, or to secondhand smoke. Genetics and air pollutants can also trigger the disease, as can unventilated cooking oil fumes, which in some parts of the world is related to women's work. And there's this question: In an age of anti-smoking campaigns proving so successful in cutting lung cancer deaths, how should society deal with the others -- those patients rocked by the news that they have an often deadly condition through no fault of their own? "The nonsmokers who survive lung cancer are some of our best advocates for awareness," said Regina Vidaver of the National Lung Cancer Partnership, which advocates for increased federal funding of research. "They're free from that stigma that society places, I'd say unjustly, on smokers who get sick." The group is not tiny. Of the 200,000 or so Americans diagnosed yearly with lung cancer, about 15 percent -- or 30,000 -- are nonsmokers, studies suggest. Even if we took away all of the smokers and ex-smokers from the pool of patients, lung cancer would rank seventh among the leading types of cancer afflicting the U.S. public. Two-thirds of nonsmokers now battling the disease are women. That could be a function of statistical probability, some researchers say. Women in the general population smoke less than men and would probably represent the majority of any group of nonsmokers, including those with cancer. Still, some studies raise the possibility that women may actually be more susceptible. Stanford University oncologist Heather A. Wakelee headed up a 2007 study that found lung cancer rates among "never smokers" ranged from 4.8 to 13.7 per 100,000 men in a year, and 14.4 to 20.8 per 100,000 women. "Those of us who treat the disease get a sense that these incidence rates for nonsmokers are increasing," Wakelee said in a telephone interview. "But getting firm numbers is tricky" because the national cancer registry does not collect data on patients' smoking habits. On the positive side, emerging research leads doctors to believe that nonsmoking women -- those who have smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime -- tend to respond better to treatment than nonsmoking men do. "What is causing these cancers in people who don't smoke? We don't know, and I doubt we'll ever find a particular cause," said oncologist Ramaswamy Govindan at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "It could be genetic, or a combination of factors. ... It's mostly bad luck. A random thing." Never smoked Montessa Lee was 28 when she was diagnosed. The Maryland schoolteacher had classic symptoms of lung cancer -- shortness of breath, stabbing pains in the chest, discomfort in her back and neck. But because she had never smoked, Lee and her doctors assumed she was asthmatic or had come down with bronchitis. Antibiotics were prescribed. Months passed and the symptoms worsened. Maybe a heart problem, the doctors thought. By the time they zeroed in on the possibility of lung cancer, Lee had developed a tumor 15 centimeters wide. "I became angry because back then -- in 2006 -- there wasn't much research on younger nonsmokers who got cancer. It was all about smoking," she said. "I wound up turning my anger into advocacy. I had a lot of faith and family support, and I knew this was going to become a healing testimony." Lee withstood a regimen of chemotherapy and radiation treatments and has been cancer-free for five years. "Because science has turned more attention to people like me, now there's hope," she said. Public awareness of lung cancer afflicting nonsmoking women rose with the 2006 death of Dana Reeve, the 44-year-old widow of actor Christopher Reeve. Reports the following year in the Journal of Clinical Oncology estimated "that 15 percent of men and 53 percent of all women with lung cancer worldwide are never smokers," though researchers were stumped about the reasons. In Asia, high rates of women diagnosed with lung cancer were linked to heavy exposure to unventilated smoke of cooking oils used in Asian dishes, a problem not thought to be serious in the United States. In recent years, scientists have been examining the role of estrogen in the spread of lung cancer and its potential treatment. Joan Schiller, deputy director of the Simmons Cancer Center in Texas, told the American Society of Clinical Oncologists in a 2010 interview: "This is such a relatively new field, we're just beginning to explore all the options. ... Perhaps estrogen is driving lung cancer in some people, just as estrogen drives breast cancer in some people." If so, estrogen receptors could be targeted in therapy to drive the cancer out, she said. In Gall's case, a drug approved for lung cancer patients just last summer could be a lifesaver. Crizotinib, developed by Pfizer under the brand name Xalkori, has been found to shrink or stabilize tumors in patients carrying a gene mutation known as ALK, or anaplastic lymphoma kinase. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration sped up approval of the oral drug for some patients diagnosed with non-small-cell lung cancer after weighing the drug's success in attacking other kinds of cancer. Gall is one of about 9,000 Americans diagnosed annually whose cancer appears driven by the ALK mutation. "The timing of this drug's approval was very fortunate for her," said her oncologist, Chao Huang, who works for the University of Kansas and VA hospitals. Gall said she hopes the medication will keep her from having to undergo chemotherapy. As for the emotional toll of hearing she has lung cancer -- and being clueless to how she got it -- Gall resists thoughts that might distract from her goal to get well. "I try not to dwell on the why because it just takes you down a rabbit hole, and that's not good," she said. "I try to look forward and not backward." Husband Kurt bought a radon detection kit to check their home's levels of the odorless, ground-emitting gas. The test confirmed all was safe. Back pain For Judy Stephens, the symptoms began with back pain that would migrate to her upper right leg. "It was the classic picture of, say, a pinched nerve," said her son, Thad Stephens, an emergency room physician in Johnson County. He arranged for a CT scan, then a full body scan. The discovery of a tailbone tumor that had spread from the lungs stunned the family. "I was bitter, thinking of these little old ladies who smoked all their lives and never got cancer," Thad Stephens said. "Mom never did anything to hurt herself." Having not once smoked, Judy Stephens at age 71 was told her lung cancer would claim her in three to six months. She battled bravely for 16 months, aided by an experimental drug called Tarceva, which has been found to help some female cancer patients in their post-menopause years. Her death last October happened to coincide with new recommendations issued by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, a professional medical group. The network for the first time called for lung cancer screening using low-dose CT -- but only for older, heavy smokers. Judy Stephens' family could not help but wonder how she got sick. Suspicion turned to the basement of her Shawnee home, where she spent time at the sewing machine stitching dresses for her doll collection. Could she have absorbed too much radon over the years? Did ceramic dust that would accumulate when she made and repaired dolls drift into her lungs? Was it secondhand smoke from her husband's habit, which he gave up more than 30 years ago? All speculation. No answers. "We've done such a good job with smoking cessation messages, people think it's the only way of developing lung cancer -- and that's a dangerous assumption," said Vidaver of the National Lung Cancer Partnership. "You need to listen to your body." Gall did just that, and her primary care physician reacted quickly in scheduling a chest X-ray that revealed suspicious shadows. Experts caution that chest X-rays and CT scans shouldn't be relied upon routinely and their ability to detect lung cancer is far from foolproof. Your cough in most cases is just a cough, but one that persists for weeks should be brought to a physician's attention, whether you smoke or not. "Whatever I can put forward to raise awareness and help prevention, maybe that's what I've been chosen to do," said Gall, who works for the Community Blood Center. She noted that her profession is to help people in life-threatening situations. And suddenly, out of the blue, those people include her. To reach Rick Montgomery, call 816-234-4410 or send email to rmontgomery@kcstar.com. |
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