 Smiling against the odds
Six years ago, Deborah Smith-Fuderer
found herself staring eye-to-eye with her own mortality. At age 41,
the New Berlin resident was diagnosed with lung cancer, which quickly
progressed to stage four, an extremely lethal stage of cancer from
which only some 5 percent of those diagnosed survive.
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 Operation fight cancer
Heroes come in all forms. There’s the fireman who saves an
elderly woman from a burning building. Or the bystander who saves a
child from drowning, but heroism is not confined to the evening news.
Most heroes are ordinary people who choose to do extraordinary things
for their fellow men and women.
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 Hats off to health
Six months after Kathleen Chenoweth
Corby died of cancer, a fund-raiser was held as a celebration of her
life. That fund-raiser soon snowballed into several fund-raisers, and
the start of a new philanthropic organization: The Grace Foundation.
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Cancer risk decisions
Fiber optics technology is once again
creating exciting news in the medical field, this time in the fight
against breast cancer. Mammary ductoscopy and ductal lavage are used
in combination to create one of the most powerful early detection
tools for breast cancer.
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Lessons from the club
Some four years ago, Kathy Sieja’s
doctor told her the unimaginable — she had cancer. The news came
like "a bolt from the blue," she related. "I wasn’t
worried. Three different doctors had said it was just fibrocystic
changes. And I have no family history of cancer, I don’t smoke, I
exercise regularly, I eat right."
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Showhouse for research
Four years ago, Nance Kinney, a breast
cancer survivor, founded the Wisconsin Breast Cancer Showhouse. All
proceeds go to fund the Wisconsin Medical College’s Cancer Center’s
breast and prostate cancer research. Last year $300,000 was raised;
the goal this year is $350,000. This year’s Showhouse on 3823 N.
Lake Dr. will be open to the public June 8 through the 23.
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Getting ready for reconstruction
Imagine
being told you have breast cancer. Then imagine yourself looking in
the mirror, removing your shirt, seeing your breasts, knowing that
what you’ve been accustomed to seeing in that mirror all of your life, feeling in the shower, fitting within a bra’s form, would soon
change with a surgical procedure known as mastectomy, or removal of
the breast.
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Making it stick
About one in every 57 women in the
United States will develop ovarian cancer in her lifetime. Ovarian
cancer is the deadliest of all cancers of the female reproductive
system because nearly 70 percent of women are not diagnosed until the
disease is in an advanced stage. To further complicate matters, many
women don’t know much about the illness or its symptoms.
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A place to laugh
The unmistakable
caricatured face pops out from around the bright red door. It’s the
symbol for Gilda’s Club, a free cancer support community for
patients and their families, that will make its newest home over the
next year in a former Masonic Temple on Oakland Avenue in Shorewood.
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Kathy's
house
Kathy Kuettner was a
beautiful and talented young mother of three small daughters who
learned that the abdominal pains she had been experiencing were caused
by a form of non-Hodgkins Iymphoma called Burkitt’s. Despite an arduous year of chemotherapy
and a bone marrow transplant from her sister, Kuettner passed away in
July of 2000.
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Wig Wonder
Each Tuesday and Friday
in March, actress Elizabeth Norment got her head buzzed by the Rep’s
wigmaster and hairdresser, Kevin McElroy. Ms. Norment was playing the
role of an English professor suffering from ovarian cancer in the Rep’s
production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Wit” last season.
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First, education
Milwaukee area women
have a unique opportunity to participate in one of the largest
national studies in breast cancer prevention to date. The Study of
Tamoxifen and Raloxifene (STAR) examines how these drugs compare to
one another in their effectiveness to reduce the incidence of breast
cancer among women at high risk.
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Cruisin'
for a cure
Seventy-nine days. Four thousand, two hundred and
fifty miles. Four time zones. Ten states. More than
$10,000 raised for the Waukesha Memorial Hospital
Regional Cancer Center. And not one flat tire along the
way.
>>part
one
>>part
two
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The
power of writing
Recent research demonstrates that writing about a
life-changing experience can help decrease the effects
of stress and enhance the immune system. The creator and
instructor of Being Your Own Witness, a memoir writing
workshop for cancer survivors, Staci Leigh O’Brien,
Ph.D., believes that all of us can benefit from living
an examined life.
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