Hello My Friends,

November is Lung Cancer Awareness month so I am doing my annual fundraiser. I hope you will join me in supporting the GO2 Lung Cancer Foundation.  They have made incredible strides toward achieving government funding for lung cancer research. 

My husband Jack Willis, was 54 years old when he lost his battle with lung cancer. We had been married for 27 years. Our son was 19 and our daughter, was 22, when they lost their dad. He has been gone 18 years now. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him and miss our happy life together. We loved to mountain bike together or float the river and fish, and spend time with our family.

Our journey with lung cancer lasted just 9 months. It is a vicious, swift, devastating disease! He died on Dec 23rd, 2004 - a date and a day that is seared into my memory. Not long after he died, my daughter said to me, ”I just want everything to go back to normal”. Because of his death, life would never be the same, we had to learn to live “the new normal”.

I realized after I lost Jack that lung cancer was the number one cancer killer in the world. Because there was $0 federal funding when he was diagnosed, his chances of survival were no better than his father, Earl Willis, who had died of lung cancer in 1990, or his aunt who died in 1981! All told, we have had 6 family members touched by this disease. 

I have realized a few things:

• The stigma attached to lung cancer caused this lack of funding.
• That I had to make a difference for others so they didn’t have the same hopelessness that we had.
• That I wanted to honor Jack’s memory and be his voice in this fight.

So, I got online and found the closest fundraising event to me for lung cancer was in Virginia Beach, 2 and half hours from my home. I have held a fundraiser every year since 2005. At that time I lost my mother to lung cancer, my brother was diagnosed with lung cancer, and my brother-in-law, Randy Willis died from stomach cancer. 

The statics are still dismal for survival and that is why we must persevere and continue the fight by raising money, changing perceptions, and removing the stigma. Just take a look at these facts below: 

Lung Cancer Facts
This Year 237,000 Americans will be Diagnosed with Lung Cancer

Lung Cancer is the Leading Cause of Cancer Death in the U.S. but receives the least amount of federal research funding

Lung Cancer Claims More Lives Annually than Colorectal, Pancreatic, Breast, or Prostate Combined

Nearly 20 Percent of Men and Women Diagnosed with Lung Cancer Are Never Smokers

We are the ones responsible for making it happen, no one else! Don't think you can rely on the government….I naively thought that cancer research was funded fairly by the powers to be, but that is not the case. It is up to us to be the voice for our loved ones.

Thank you for visiting my page! Any help you can give is appreciated! 

Love,

Cathy 

GO2 for Lung Cancer (a merger of the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation and Lung Cancer Alliance) s a place where everyone impacted by lung cancer finds personalized care, powerful connections and purposeful collaboration—uniting around shared goals to empower people, increase survival, drive innovative research and transform the future of lung cancer.

The funds we collect will advance their mission to transform survivorship by improving the lives of those vulnerable, at risk, and diagnosed with lung cancer.