Calling Birmingham-area survivors with star quality! “My 2nd Act: Survivor Stories from the Stage” is looking for Birmingham area women to share their personal stories about surviving cancer. Auditions will take place at Dawson Baptist Church on Aug. 23 and Aug. 25 from 4-8 p.m.
We know all the stories will be inspiring, but some survivors will be selected to participate in a stage show that will take place Nov. 6 at 3 p.m. at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. These shows are produced in theaters across the country by the Women Survivors Alliance of Nashville. A new television series on Vrtuo Interactive Networks follows the auditions and productions to provide an even wider audience for these wonderful survivor stories!
Go to the website to sign up for a time slot for the Birmingham auditions. What a wonderful opportunity to spread the word: There can be life after cancer!
Hayidah-Nicole Green is on a mission to help humanity.
The physicist was recently granted a $1.1 million cancer research grant through the Veterans Affairs Historical Black Colleges and Universities Research Scientist Training Program to help continue her groundbreaking work to fight cancer.
Her work, which involves lasers and nanoparticles to target cancer cells, has had proven success in the lab. While this is an incredible accomplishment of its own, when you consider the fact that Green is the first member of her family to ever go to college, it becomes truly awe-inspiring.
One of less than 100 Black female physicists in the United States, she was inspired to battle when she watched the aunt and uncle who raised her succumb to cancer after struggling through radiation and chemotherapy. This inspired her to turn her education and experience to fighting cancer.
When asked about her journey by MademeNoire, she said, “It was awful and I saw why my aunt opted out of it. My uncle did go on to live for 10 years more, but both of those experiences made me think there had to be a better way to deal with cancer.”
Green is committed to discovering a more humane way of attacking cancer cells by using the modern technology she has expertise in to pinpoint cancerous cells and attack them directly without affecting the rest of the body.
So far, Green is testing two different treatments. One focuses on tumor shrinkage and tumor regression, the other is monotherapy, which is a form of immunotherapy and an interface with personalized medicine.
Green still needs more money, though. “We’re talking upwards of $20 million,” she said. “I still need to gather support by a fundraising effort.”
She has a website, physics2cancer, that accepts donations to help continue her research to fight and beat cancer.
As for the future, Green is hoping that she can have as big an impact on the world as the most famous physicist in history. She said, “When I thought of a physicist, I thought of Albert Einstein. I hope in the future people will also think of me, a Black female physicist.”
By James Gallagher, health editor, BBC News website in Chicago
Image copyrightAP
The hunt for a cancer cure should be treated with as much urgency as the Ebola outbreak, says US Vice-President Joe Biden.
He said he had dreamed of being the president that cured cancer and believed it was possible.
He is now leading the US “cancer moonshot” programme to cure cancer.
He told scientists their success could “literally change the world” but criticised the barriers to getting on clinical trials.
In a speech to American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting he said: “[When] we were worried about Ebola we were able to aggregate tens of millions of dollars and the entire US military because the World Health Organization couldn’t handle it.
“That’s the kind of urgency we need with regard to cancer.”
In January, President Barack Obama announced the $1bn (£710m) “moonshot” and that Joe Biden would lead it.
The vice-president said: “If I could have done anything I would have wanted to be the president that ended cancer as we know it because I believe it is now possible.”
It is a personal mission for Mr Biden, who lost his son Beau to brain cancer at the age of 46 last year.
He told the meeting of 30,000 of the world’s leading cancer scientists and doctors that his son had been able to take part in pioneering clinical trials.
But “what about the 96% of people” who miss out, he asked, and called for new measures to help the poorest patients take part.
“Nobody should have to forgo a critical clinical trial because they cannot afford the gas to get there or a baby sitter at home,” he said.
His speech referenced many of the major themes that have emerged at the meeting in Chicago including the transformative power of immunotherapy and the unparalleled understanding of the genetics of cancer.
“[They are] offering profound promise that wasn’t there five years ago,” he said.
But Mr Biden said the progress could be much faster if only scientists worked closely together.
He said: “Imagine if we all worked together… shared the data behind breakthroughs so that the field as a whole can move forward faster and avoid unnecessary redundancy.
“The whole world is looking to you, your success can literally change the world. We need you now more than we ever have.”
Huge breakthroughs
Dr Deborah Mayer, one of the expert advisers to the moonshot, said there had been terrific progress in cancer science and the field was now at a “tipping point”.
Huge breakthroughs in harnessing the power of the immune system to attack tumours or in tailoring drugs to the weak spot in individual patients’ tumours are already helping patients.
In the US, five-year cancer survival has increased from 30% in 1950 to 48% in 1975 and 68% in 2010.
Dr Mayer told the BBC News website that the moonshot would act as a catalyst to bring breakthroughs to patients faster.
“Hopefully it will close that 17-year gap between what we know and what we do.
“The benefit to patients of this moonshot is we will move forward to enhanced treatments, we’re going to find cancers earlier when they’re more curable and we’re going to figure out how to prevent them.”
The American Society of Clinical Oncology has recommended four key areas the moonshot needs to deal with.
Shortening the time needed to perform trials and bring drugs to market
Developing tests that show which targeted therapies will benefit patients
Increasing data sharing between companies, researchers and hospitals
Boosting collaboration in the cancer field
The organisation’s president Dr Julie Vose said: “The Moonshot Initiative can be a vehicle for major new progress against cancer.”
A new combination of chemotherapy drugs should become the main therapy for pancreatic cancer, say UK researchers.
The disease is so hard to treat that survival rates have barely changed for decades.
But data, presented at the world’s biggest cancer conference, showed long-term survival could be increased from 16% to 29%.
The findings have been described as a “major win”, “incredibly exciting” and as offering new hope to patients.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly cancers, with patients often given just months to live after diagnosis.
It is aggressive, resists treatment and, because pancreatic tumours cause nondescript symptoms, is often found only after it has spread throughout the body.
In the UK alone, 9,400 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and 8,800 die from the disease each year.
Double team
The trial on 732 patients – in hospitals in the UK, Sweden, France and Germany – compared the standard chemotherapy drug gemcitabine against a combination of gemcitabine and capecitabine.
The results, released at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual conference, showed that average survival times increased from 25 to 28 months.
But there was a far more dramatic impact on long-term survival with 29% of patients alive for at least five years with combination therapy compared with 16% normally.
There was no difference in side-effects.
Prof John Neoptolemos, from the University of Liverpool, who led the study, said: “This important trial shows that this drug combination could give pancreatic patients valuable extra months and even years and so will become the new treatment for patients with this disease.
“The difference in short-term survival may seem modest but improvement in long-term survival is substantial for this cancer.
“This drug combination will become the new standard of care for patients with the disease.”
It is not entirely clear why there is the difference in survival rates, but one idea surrounds the new drug being less toxic allowing patients to tolerate higher doses.
‘Exciting’
Alex Ford, chief executive of Pancreatic Cancer UK, said: “These are incredibly exciting results from a major trial for those diagnosed with this dreadful disease.
“The outlook for pancreatic cancer has been grim. With few treatment options, survival rates have barely changed in 40 years in the UK. Currently just 5% of pancreatic cancer patients can expect to live for five years.
“At the same time, incidence is set to soar by a third to more than 12,000 people being diagnosed every year by 2030.
“The possibility of increasing survival for those who have undergone surgery for pancreatic cancer will give great hope to hundreds of patients and their families who may benefit. The importance of clinical trials to help transform the outlook for pancreatic cancer cannot be over-estimated.
“We now need to see these results quickly translate to a change in approach by clinicians so that patients start to benefit more widely straightaway.”
The study was funded by the charity Cancer Research UK.
Its chief clinician Prof Peter Johnson said: “Pancreatic cancer remains a very difficult disease to find and treat.
“Despite this, we are making steady progress, through trials like this one, where the use of better chemotherapy after surgery was able to increase the number of people surviving the disease.”
Around 340,000 people worldwide are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year with the highest incidence in North America and Europe.
Dr Smitha Krishnamurthi, from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, said: “Pancreatic cancer remains one of the most hard-to-treat cancers.
“It is a major win to find that adding a generic chemotherapy not only improves survival for these patients, but does so with little effect on patients’ quality of life.”
Some patients with advanced cancer and their doctors are tentatively whispering a word they hadn’t dared to utter before: “cure.”
Cancer remains a death sentence for millions every year, causing one in every seven deaths around the globe. Over the years the wily disease has outsmarted the medical world’s best attempts to rein it in with an uncanny ability to evolve and mutate, adapting to whatever new drugs are thrown its way. Yet a new degree of optimism is emerging in labs and hospitals around the globe as researchers coax the immune system to hunt down malignant cells or suppress cancer’s defense mechanisms.
“We are in the midst of a huge paradigm shift,” said Padmanee Sharma, professor of genitourinary medical oncology and immunology at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. With the new drugs in advanced melanoma, she says, “about 20 percent are getting long-term survival.”
Many questions remain. Some cancers like pancreatic cancer and brain tumors remain largely untreatable. And, where progress has been made, so far only a small percentage of patients respond to the latest treatments. Still, there is now statistical evidence that some people with tumors who would have previously died within months are living cancer-free for years, raising the tantalizing possibility of developing cures for far more cancers in the future.
“We’re early in the journey,” said David Reese, senior vice president of translational sciences at biotechnology firm Amgen Inc. “Why is it still a minority of patients that have these extraordinary responses? That’s the hard work that needs to be done now.”
Jimmy Carter
Progress in treating advanced melanoma, one of the deadliest cancers with a median survival rate of less than 9 months, have been especially promising. These drugs include Bristol-Myers Squibb & Co.’s Yervoy and Opdivo as well as Merck & Co.’s Keytruda. At the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago this week, researchers will present data showing 40 percent of advanced melanoma patients in a trial of Keytruda have been in remission for three years.
In December, former president Jimmy Carter, 91, said scans showed no sign of the advanced melanoma he had been diagnosed with just four months earlier, following treatment with Keytruda. Some of the earliest patients receiving Yervoy have now been alive for more than a decade, double the five-year survival rate that’s deemed a cure.
Stage IV Melanoma
Alan Kravitz, a 74-year-old retired gourmet grocery store owner, was one of the first patients to get Opdivo when he was diagnosed with stage IV melanoma. With his prospects looking grim, Kravitz’s doctor told him to get his affairs in order, then enrolled him into a clinical trial of the Bristol-Myers drug in 2006.
“When someone tells you the average survival from this diagnosis is measured in months, you’ll do whatever you have to do,” Kravitz said from his home in Clinton, Connecticut.
Kravitz received infusions twice a month, and a year later the nodules on his lungs were virtually gone. The mass on his liver, once larger than a golf ball, melted away. All that’s now left is a scar. A decade after his diagnosis, Kravitz takes no medicine and shows no sign of cancer.
“The goal here is to cure people of their cancer so we don’t need continuous therapy,” said his doctor, Mario Sznol, an oncologist and co-director of the skin cancer unit at Yale Cancer Center.
Cancers Unmasked
The new melanoma drugs are called “checkpoint inhibitors” because they unmask cancers by removing the tools malignant cells use to evade the immune system. They’re also being used against some lung cancers, kidney cancer and Hodgkin lymphoma, and being tested in dozens of other tumor types. Yet these drugs are of little use if a patient’s body isn’t producing T-cells, a form of white blood cells, that would recognize, attack and kill malignant cells in the first place.
One method being tested to boost patient’s T-cells is a personalized treatment known as CAR-T, in which doctors genetically engineer each person’s immune system T-cells to target specific tumors. In some blood cancer patients, the treatment has yielded startling improvements in the sickest of patients.
One of those patients is Emily Whitehead, today a healthy, happy fifth-grader. In 2012, then 6-year-old Emily’s acute lymphoblastic leukemia relapsed and her doctors suggested home hospice care, her father recalled.
Instead, Emily’s parents enrolled her in a clinical trial, where she became the first child to ever receive CAR-T therapy. It did not go well. She reacted to the treatment with a 105 degree fever and hallucinations. She remained in a coma for two weeks, breathing through a ventilator.
Symptom Free
Yet the treatment worked. Emily emerged from her coma on her seventh birthday and about a week later a CAT scan revealed that her cancer had vanished. This May, Emily celebrated four years of living cancer free.
“That she looks healthy and that people don’t realize what she’s been through, that she can have a normal childhood — that’s what a cure is to me,” said her father, Tom. “I wake up every day happy to see her smiling.”
To date, about 500 patients have received a CAR-T therapy across various company and academic trials, according to David Chang, chief medical officer at Kite Pharma Inc. More than 90 percent of the acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients have gone into complete remission, many of whom had tried three prior types of therapy and failed, according to Marcela Maus, director of cellular immunotherapy at Massachusetts General Hospital’s cancer center. Now the wait is on for more patients to follow Emily toward the five-year survivor mark.
“I would be using the c-word based on what’s available,” Chang said in a telephone interview, without actually ever saying the word “cure” out loud.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — In broadcasting, our look is a very important part of the job. In my 25-plus years as a broadcast journalist, my look has changed here and there, but I always try to be professional and appropriate. I’ve learned our clothing can communicate something to viewers that we may or may not be trying to communicate. That’s actually something I learned from my mom as teenager, and thankfully, it stuck. So really it comes as no surprise to me that, on occasion, different organizations will reach out to anchors and ask if you’ll wear a particular color on a particular day to raise awareness about a cause or health condition people face. We have more than a million viewers in our television market so it’s a great way to raise awareness. I almost always join in: red for women and heart disease, pink for breast cancer awareness, purple for Alzheimer’s or domestic violence awareness and prevention, teal for ovarian cancer awareness, and yellow for childhood cancer awareness and research. did-you-knowLast month, I was approached about wearing the color turquoise at some point during the week of May 9-13 to mark National Women’s Lung Health Week. I reflexively emailed back: “I will wear turquoise every day that week.” For me and my family, the “Turquoise Takeover” comes at a time when we are learning everything we can about lung cancer. We got our first lesson five months ago when my mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 adenocarcinoma. What I have since learned from the American Cancer Society is that this type of lung cancer is more common in women than in men. It is also the most common type of lung cancer seen in non-smokers, although it mainly occurs in current and former smokers. I also learned from my mother’s medical team that she is lucky that her cancer was found so early, that normally patients are much sicker when they find this cancer. Our silver lining has been that my mother is in good physical shape. She has been able to tolerate chemotherapy very well, and the tumor is responding the way the doctors want. It’s contained and shrinking ever so slightly. We thank God for that response and pray it keeps moving in the right direction. I told my mother I would be wearing turquoise for a week to raise awareness about lung cancer in women and asked her if she was OK with me sharing some of her story in an article that would run during the Turquoise Takeover. Anyone who has met my mom knows she doesn’t meet any strangers so her response was in the affirmative. She said, “Maybe it will help someone.” That’s why in addition to agreeing to wear turquoise all week, I want to share this part of my mother’s journey. She’d had a cough, but it wasn’t until she coughed up blood that she went to see a doctor. A chest x-ray revealed the abnormality; a bronchoscopy and biopsy confirmed the cancer. We all wonder what if there had been an annual test to check her lungs for cancer along with all of those other annual exams that have kept her healthy enough to tolerate chemotherapy. What we know about lung cancer is the earlier it’s detected, the more options are available for treatment. The medical science is so advanced that genetic testing and targeted gene therapy for some lung cancers allow doctors to discuss cure for some of their patients and treatment as a chronic condition for others. But some won’t benefit from the advances science has made in treating lung cancers because their disease will be detected too late. That’s what the Turquoise Takeover is all about for me: communicating to women who have a chronic cough to ask their doctor for a chest X-ray. I hope you will tune in to watch me on the news doing what my mother taught me: to make sure my clothes communicate what I want them to say about me. This week, I’m saying to women that lung cancer can and does happen to us. I know because it happened to my mother, and that’s why I’m joining the American Lung Association this week for Lung Force and the Turquoise Takeover. There will be LungForce social Thursday evening at the Redmont Hotel. — Sherri Jackson is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and news anchor at WIAT CBS42 News. Story published originally in The Birmingham News.BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — In broadcasting, our look is a very important part of the job. In my 25-plus years as a broadcast journalist, my look has changed here and there, but I always try to be professional and appropriate. I’ve learned our clothing can communicate something to viewers that we may or may not be trying to communicate. That’s actually something I learned from my mom as teenager, and thankfully, it stuck.
So really it comes as no surprise to me that, on occasion, different organizations will reach out to anchors and ask if you’ll wear a particular color on a particular day to raise awareness about a cause or health condition people face. We have more than a million viewers in our television market so it’s a great way to raise awareness. I almost always join in: red for women and heart disease, pink for breast cancer awareness, purple for Alzheimer’s or domestic violence awareness and prevention, teal for ovarian cancer awareness, and yellow for childhood cancer awareness and research.
Last month, I was approached about wearing the color turquoise at some point during the week of May 9-13 to mark National Women’s Lung Health Week. I reflexively emailed back: “I will wear turquoise every day that week.” For me and my family, the “Turquoise Takeover” comes at a time when we are learning everything we can about lung cancer.
We got our first lesson five months ago when my mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 adenocarcinoma. What I have since learned from the American Cancer Society is that this type of lung cancer is more common in women than in men. It is also the most common type of lung cancer seen in non-smokers, although it mainly occurs in current and former smokers. I also learned from my mother’s medical team that she is lucky that her cancer was found so early, that normally patients are much sicker when they find this cancer.
Our silver lining has been that my mother is in good physical shape. She has been able to tolerate chemotherapy very well, and the tumor is responding the way the doctors want. It’s contained and shrinking ever so slightly. We thank God for that response and pray it keeps moving in the right direction.
I told my mother I would be wearing turquoise for a week to raise awareness about lung cancer in women and asked her if she was OK with me sharing some of her story in an article that would run during the Turquoise Takeover. Anyone who has met my mom knows she doesn’t meet any strangers so her response was in the affirmative. She said, “Maybe it will help someone.”
That’s why in addition to agreeing to wear turquoise all week, I want to share this part of my mother’s journey. She’d had a cough, but it wasn’t until she coughed up blood that she went to see a doctor. A chest x-ray revealed the abnormality; a bronchoscopy and biopsy confirmed the cancer.
We all wonder what if there had been an annual test to check her lungs for cancer along with all of those other annual exams that have kept her healthy enough to tolerate chemotherapy. What we know about lung cancer is the earlier it’s detected, the more options are available for treatment. The medical science is so advanced that genetic testing and targeted gene therapy for some lung cancers allow doctors to discuss cure for some of their patients and treatment as a chronic condition for others.
But some won’t benefit from the advances science has made in treating lung cancers because their disease will be detected too late.
That’s what the Turquoise Takeover is all about for me: communicating to women who have a chronic cough to ask their doctor for a chest X-ray.
I hope you will tune in to watch me on the news doing what my mother taught me: to make sure my clothes communicate what I want them to say about me. This week, I’m saying to women that lung cancer can and does happen to us. I know because it happened to my mother, and that’s why I’m joining the American Lung Association this week for Lung Force and the Turquoise Takeover.
There will be LungForce social Thursday evening at the Redmont Hotel.
—
Sherri Jackson is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and news anchor at WIAT CBS42 News. Story published originally in The Birmingham News.
WASHINGTON — Cancer immunotherapy will get a hefty dose of its own moonshot Wednesday when a tech billionaire announces he’s giving $250 million to six cancer centers nationwide, including Manhattan’s Memorial Sloan Kettering and Stanford.
Sean Parker, founder of the music file-sharing service Napster and the founding president of Facebook, says he is putting his money behind cancer immune therapy because it is at a turning point and would benefit from research that is done without regard for the costs.
Immunotherapy, which enhances the body’s immune system to kill cancer cells, is best known these days because former president Jimmy Carter was on an immune-based drug treatment when he announced in December that there is no detectable cancer in his body.
Parker’s enormous cash infusion is the largest ever for cancer immunotherapy — and one of the largest ever for cancer research — and comes three months after President Obama called for a $1 billion federal cancer research program that he dubbed a “moonshot.” The estate of the billionaire shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig donated $540 million to six cancer centers in 2014 and Nike co-founder Phil Knight pledged $500 million to cancer researchers at Oregon Health & Science University in 2013.
Last month, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, Jones Apparel Group founder Sidney Kimmel and other philanthropists announced a $125 million donation for cancer immunotherapy research for the Johns Hopkins University medical school.
The new Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco will fund “high risk best ideas that may not get funded by the government,” says Jeffrey Bluestone, a prominent immunologist and former University of California, San Francisco official who now heads the institute.
The institute hopes to improve upon what it calls slow progress in improving cancer survival rates. In the last 20 years, federal data show the the five-year survival rate for lung cancer is up from just over 13% to about 17%.
Currently, immune therapy is only approved “as a treatment of last resort,” Parker complains, which he says means it’s only used after patients’ immune systems are destroyed by chemotherapy and radiation.
“I want to make it a front-line treatment,” Parker said in an interview here last month. “It would change the whole cost of care downstream.”
Just as the White House’s moonshot hopes to foster collaboration between typically competing hospitals, Parker’s new institute will coordinate research across the six academic cancer centers and other researchers who may be added after additional money is raised. Each of the cancer centers in the consortium agrees it will send top scientists to join the Parker Institute and relinquish considerable control over their research.
Thanks to the funding, Jedd Wolchok, a renowned cancer researcher and oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering, estimates he and his staff spend about a third of their time working to get grant funding and, “now we can use our time to directly make progress.”
Some try to manage expectations when it comes to cancer immunotherapy, which led to many sensational reports of what some mistakenly described as Carter’s “cure.”
Cleveland oncologist Stan Gerson says immunotherapy can lead to “dramatic responses in lethal cancers,” but he notes that just 30%-40% of patients benefit, most relapse in one to three years, and little is known about how and why some patients respond and others don’t.
“Is it a replacement for everything else we’re doing?” Gerson says of immunotherapy. “Right now we can’t say so … but this is the time to make investments and pronouncements.”
Gerson, who is director of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, estimates that another $10 billion would be needed to get the treatments approved and to patients.
Parker is contributing a quarter of the total moonshot Obama proposed for all cancer research and jump-starting the research in the most promising area right now.
“We want to be focused and we want to go fast.” says Parker. “Two words don’t come up often when talking about cancer research are ‘focus and fast.'”
In June 2009, Brad and Geri Shepard took their two young children to visit their grandparents, expecting a nice vacation and quality time for the whole family.
But Grandma Shepard was worried as soon as she saw 2-year-old Maddox step out of the car. He looked pale, Brad said. Over the course of the weekend, the normally active toddler was tired, lacked an appetite and developed a fever. The previous month, Maddox had fevers and bruising, which his pediatrician chalked up to viruses and playing at the playground.
Brad and Geri thought they were being overanxious, but Grandma Shepard’s reaction was enough to convince Geri that she should call the doctor at home and request a blood test.
Maddox registered as anemic with low blood counts. After a bone marrow biopsy, it was confirmed that Maddox had acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He was put into isolation and began chemotherapy immediately. Maddox was scared. His parents were terrified.
“How do you begin to explain this to a child?” Geri said. “At any age, cancer is awful, but for a kid, it’s devastating. They should be having playdates instead of chemotherapy.”
Little did they know, the family’s cancer battle was just beginning.
Brad took time off work and he and Geri took shifts at the hospital for five intense weeks before Maddox could continue his treatment from home. Maddox also had surgery to install a medical port in his chest, which made the chemotherapy treatments a little easier.
They came up with names to make everything less scary for Maddox. Taking his blood pressure became “arm hugs,” his IV was a “necklace” and the clinic he would visit on a weekly basis became “the kitchen,” mainly because he loved to play with the toddler kitchenette set there.
While Maddox was in isolation, their 1-year-old daughter, Danika, was in the care of her grandmother. Normally, she shared a room with him. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t visit Maddox, or that just going to see him in isolation could expose his vulnerable immune system to harmful germs.
The entire family rejoiced when Maddox was able to go home, and the Shepards had to adjust to a new normal. They installed a hand sanitizer machine by the front door, moved medical equipment into the house and had to go to the hospital two to three times a week for daylong appointments. Geri mixed his chemo and administered it each day and night.
“In the beginning, you feel like your child’s life is in your hands,” Geri said.
They settled into a routine: Because of Brad’s work, Geri would take Maddox to the clinic and keep up with his medicine. But if anything went wrong for Maddox after 5 p.m., Brad would rush him to the ER since the clinic was closed. He spent many long, grueling nights making sure his son received the proper treatments.
Maddox couldn’t be around other children or in public spaces, so he and Danika bonded even more by spending so much time together. Still, Geri’s heart broke for her children — Maddox, who was enduring an unbelievable fight at such a young age, and Danika, who couldn’t understand why her brother or parents regularly left without her.
“This is when she should have been at the playground, and so often, siblings of cancer patients are robbed of a time when they can just be kids,” Geri said. “Siblings are the unsung heroes of this fight and they take a back seat, and I know my daughter felt it because Maddox received so much attention.”
The Shepards tried to create a new normal for their children, despite the fact that Maddox lost his hair and Danika struggled to connect with other kids.
A chance conversation during one of their hospital visits led them to the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, a charity dedicated to funding childhood cancer research. It regularly hosts head-shaving events in honor of the children who lose their hair during chemotherapy, to let them know they aren’t alone.
The events also help families connect with one another to form a support system. They celebrate the kids and their siblings with gifts, parades, games, costumes and the chance to forget what they’ve endured for a little while, Geri said.
“It’s like one big party where adults and even other kids agree to shave their heads in solidarity,” she said. “It’s a simple but meaningful act. And it allows the kids a chance to just be kids and feel special for a good reason.”
In 2011, Maddox was in maintenance phase. He was still on chemo and going to the clinic, but it afforded him a little more normalcy.
Geri and Brad, who had been thinking about having a third child, were watching Giuliana Rancic’s reality show, “Giuliana and Bill.” It detailed Rancic’s struggles with infertility and her discovery that she had breast cancer. It inspired Geri to do a breast exam, just to be sure. She found a lump.
She had it removed, and thought she was in the clear. But the tumor was aggressive and her doctor suggested chemotherapy.
“Life felt unfair,” Brad said. “How could this happen again? We weren’t even through with what Maddox was experiencing yet.”
Geri decided on a moderate chemo plan. She and Maddox were having treatments at the same hospital, and Brad would go from one end to the other to check on them.
At first, Geri was numbed by the diagnosis. She was able to be at home for most of the time while in treatment and continued taking care of Maddox. But she wasn’t prepared for how the chemotherapy would affect her.
“The steroids would change Maddox’s personality and make him irritable, but he was always a happy kid, even during treatment. He went through hell and back, but you would never know it because there was this joy and light in him, so he was always smiling,” she said. “But I had some pretty dark days during chemo and it can really break your spirit.”
Geri endured four rounds of chemo. The effects built up and made her delirious with fatigue and caused her hair to fall out. Brad took care of her and the kids as he continued working. Geri said that she never saw him lose control. She had heard stories from other mothers at the clinic who said that fathers and husbands often “check out” because they don’t know how to handle the emotional toll of a loved one with cancer.
“It only made me appreciate him even more, and I’m so thankful for him,” Geri said.
Maddox and Danika didn’t seem to understand what was happening with their mother, nor did they realize how serious it could be.
Although Geri recalls days where she broke down, Brad saw only strength in her. “She always tried to shield the kids from it and hold herself together. Geri was so strong,” he said.
Finally, in 2012, the Shepard family received good news for the first time in years: Geri and Maddox were going to be OK.
Their treatments had worked, they would be ending chemotherapy and entering remission. Maddox had endured treatment for almost three and half years, while Geri had it for three months, but they ended up finishing about the same time.
Maddox’s Make-A-Wish dream to go to Disney World was finally realized. While he was on chemo, he couldn’t even get in a public pool or play in the ocean.
“Once Maddox finished his treatment, it was like a whole new wonderful world opened up to us,” Geri said. “The first time Brad and I watched our son freely play in the ocean was a beautiful day. As you can imagine, being able to go on vacations again is a simple pleasure that we will never take for granted. In fact, after everything my family has been through, we certainly have a greater appreciation for all that is simple in this life. Our family and our good health, those are the things that truly matter the most to us.”
Although it has taken Danika, now 8, a long time to trust again after feeling abandoned by her family, the once-shy kid is now goofy, funny, outgoing, extremely social and happy. Maddox, 9, is proud of himself for beating cancer.
Geri wrote and self-published a book, “Two of a Kind: The Story of How My Little Boy and I Survived Cancer,” about her family’s journey. But she also wanted other families in similar situations know that they weren’t alone. Initially, the Shepards felt as though this was only happening to them. But the St. Baldrick’s events brought them together with others and enabled Geri to share the story of their family by speaking about their experience.
Brad began shaving his head and raising money on a team of his co-workers six years ago. To date, they have raised almost $100,000.
“Your story just is one of many at these events,” Geri said. “When you can relate to another family, it builds this camaraderie you didn’t know was possible. And every day, it builds more confidence and hope.”
Building a successful business is as hard as finding the cure for cancer. Now imagine doing it while you actually have cancer. Tiffany Krumins, inventor of the wildly successful Ava the Elephant children’s medicine dispenser, did just that with the help of Shark Tank investor Barbara Corcoran.
Krumins, a former nanny from Atlanta, struck a deal with Corcoran in thepilot episode of Shark Tank in August 2009. Krumins sought $50,000 for 15% equity in her company. But Corcoran insisted she needed 55% of the business for the amount of risk involved, considering that Krumins had nothing more than a clay prototype of her talking, elephant-shaped medicine dispenser. She had no manufacturing let alone sales. Corcoran reportedly had to invest $285,000 as the costs of bringing the product to market was much more than originally anticipated.
Just a few months after her Shark Tank appearance, Krumins was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at age 27. While undergoing radiation treatment, the CEO and founder of Ava the Elephant® Brand continued to work eight to 12 hours a day from her hospital bed.
Ava the Elephant had its first manufacturing run in April 2009 and sold for $9.99. It was packaged in three languages and distributed in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Australia at more than 10,000 retail outlets including Amazon.com (AMZN), BabiesRUs.com, Drugstore.com, CVS Pharmacy (CVS), Kroger (KR), Safeway (SW), and Walgreens.com (WAG).
Sales the first year totaled approximately $170,000. Revenue stampeded to $500,000 in 2011 and were projected to soar to more than $1 million in 2013 with the addition of a second product, according to Entrepreneur.com. Krumins declined to share 2015 sales because she’s currently negotiating a licensing deal and halted production last year.
Krumins plans to sell her products through hospitals and brand promoters as well. A new version of Ava the Elephant along with two new animal characters are set to launch in this summer. She has designed four additional health-related products that are set to launch at the end of 2016.
