Annual Cancer Fundraiser Promotes No Boundaries
This event comes on the heels of David Kiser’s participation in Race Across America, a related bicycle fundraiser associated with PanCAN’s efforts to find a cure for the disease. Kiser lost his mother-in-law to pancreatic cancer.
“He did an awesome job facing a most challenging course across America and I so appreciate his accomplishment,” said Virginia Griffin, PanCAN Team Hope Fort Worth volunteer coordinator. “He continues to work to, as he has said so often, ‘Make pancreatic cancer history.’ We all will work together to change the future.”
The October event is a barbecue dinner/dance with a silent auction and raffles. Admission is $15.00.
An old friend of mine, Susannah has had pancreatic cancer for years, another friend, Cricket’s friends raised $10,000 for her medical care back in 2001 after she was diagnosed with the illness, and my friend Gene was just released from the hospital again after being told that his pancreatic cancer has spread to his liver and lungs and there is nothing else the doctor’s can do.
Griffin also lost her brother, her niece in 2002, as well as Elaine Chastain, a close friend who was at the forefront of Fort Worth PanCAN’s chapter involvement in the fight against pancreatic cancer. They all had the illness.
Called silent, swift, and deadly, the disease claims more than 32,000 American lives each year, according to the organization’s literature.
PanCAN hosted New York City’s first Pancreatic Cancer Symposium in June and the critical need for information attracted a maximum capacity crowd including 49 pancreatic cancer survivors. The organization said it was the largest such group to ever assemble.
Despite its ranking as the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the country, federal research funding on pancreatic cancer topped out last year at $66 million, or one percent of the National Cancer Institute’s $4.825 billion budget.
Most cases of pancreatic cancer appear to occur sporadically with no previous family history of the disease, according to PanCAN. A Pancreatic Cancer Family Registry is a repository of information obtained from patients and their family members and from people with a strong family history of pancreatic cancer. To ensure privacy unique study i.d. numbers are assigned to all information obtained from registry participants. There are several such registries in the U.S. and Canada, national and not limited to residents in the state of that particular registry except for in Ontario.
Family registries are an important key to unlocking the genetic basis of pancreatic cancer, the organization states.
For more information, contact the PALS Program at 877-272-6226 or go to pancan.org.
To become involved in the Fort Worth chapter and/or annual Boot Scootin’ fundraiser, contact vgriffin@pancan.org.
