Please read the story below
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My sister, Lori, was diagnosed four years ago with stage 4 lung cancer. Obviously this has taken a pretty big toll on the whole family as this is not a disease that one recovers from. You don’t simply go get “treated” for it and go on about your life. In fact, most people who are diagnosed at stage 4 are dead within 6 months. That’s what they told Lori - get prepared to die. Lori has two teenage girls and is recently divorced so this was not an option for her. She started scouring the Internet and looking for 2nd, 3rd 4th and 5th opinions. She ran into numerous dead ends as lung cancer patients are generally considered by the medical community to be “not treatable” and therefore not a whole lot of time or effort is devoted to them. Unfortunately, lung cancer kills more people than breast, colon and prostrate cancers - COMBINED. Lori is a non smoker, one of the only 13% of people that get lung cancer not attributed to smoking. Many seem to have an attitude that smokers give this disease to themselves and as such, aren’t worth the money will take to develop a cure. Lori didn’t smoke. She’d didn’t deserve this disease nor does anyone - smoker or not. I can tell you from experience, I wouldn’t wish this blight on my worst enemy.
In Lori’s case, she finally found hope at Vanderbilt University’s cancer treatment center. She got in touch with Oncologist David Carbone and Surgeon Matthew Ninan who in a nutshell, saved her life. Over the past few years, they have preformed 4 surgeries on Lori removing various cancer infected parts of her lungs. She has had over half of her lung capacity removed in order to stay alive. Still, she remains active and her most recent scans show her remaining lungs to be cancer free. However, we have had scans like this before and it always seems to come back. We’ll think it’s gone and then a year later, it shows back up again. She’s running out of lung tissue to remove and her doctors have told her they can do no more surgeries. To sum it up, this disease will most likely claim the life of sister sometime in the next few years. With the time she has left, Lori is raising her girls and devoting every spare minute to helping find a cure for lung cancer. Amy Marcus, the columnist for the Wall St. Journal won the Pulitzer prize for a front page article that she did on Lori’s story. Lori has been on TV several times in the past couple of years and has traveled the county to meet with Governors, Senators and Congressmen in an attempt to raise awareness and beat back this disease. Funding is only part of the problem as for every dollar spent on lung cancer research an estimated $15 - 20 are spent on other “more popular” cancers. Another part of problem is awareness. Yes, we all know that smoking causes this disease in 87% of the cases, but what most don’t realize is just how deadly this disease really is. Like I said, you don’t go get treated and then go on about your life. You die. End of story. It WILL kill you and there is no cure out there. The doctor that first diagnosed Lori gave her 0 hope. She had to find that on her own. Still, she is resigned to the fact that she may not get to see her girls graduate high school. We’re all hoping that she at least lives long enough to see her children into adulthood. Beyond that, anything else is just icing on the cake for her.
With all this in mind, I have decided to undertake a small project with a larger one in mind. I have ordered a quantity of the patches shown below to help bring awareness to the biker community. Eventually, I would like to host a large Lung Cancer ride here in the West Georgia area with the proceeds to benefit Lung Cancer Research. Yes, maybe it will only be a small donation, but at least we will have done something. Something is better than nothing.
The patch is 2.875” W and 4” tall, has 6 colors total and has an Iron on backing if you don’t wish to sew it on.
They cost me $2.05 each and I will be selling them for $4.50 each with 100% of the profits going towards lung cancer research. I will consider it a personal favor if you buy one of these and wear it. I'm keeping no profits whatsoever from this project and everything above costs will go to help fight this disease. When I asked Lori where I should send the profits, she indicated that Dr. Carbone (her oncologist at Vanderbilt) is trying to raise money to buy a new piece of equipment. She tried to explain what it does to me but I'm a little too dense to understand medicalspeak so I just asked her if it would help in the battle and she said that it would.
If you want a patch or two or twelve or would like to make a donation, please visit http://www.lungcancersucks.org. If you want multiple patches or wish to donate extra money to the cause, please let me know in the notes section on Pay Pal. If you'd rather send it via snail mail, please PM me for my address. If money is tight, but you'd still like a patch, please let me know and I'll pay for it. If we run out of patches, I'll order more.
If you smoke, please don’t consider this an attack on you. It’s an attack on the disease. The reason I chose the cigarette in the middle is because cigarettes are attributed to 87% of cancer cases and we can actually do something about that. I’m not trying to infringe on your rights, only to help you save your own life. If you still want to smoke, that’s your business and I won’t hold it against you. However, if we can convince even a single person to give it up then it will have been worth the effort. Even if you are a smoker, buy a patch and make an effort to quit.. Having the patch will remind you why you are quitting and the money raised just could help save your life.
Thank you - Rainman
http://www.lungcancersucks.org