nosurrender
Benevolent Dictator
Registered: 09/07/07
Posts: 4,999
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Reply with quote | #1 |
Recently, we have added a button that takes you to a donation page to help support our website, message forum and the new programs we have launched. As a fellow survivor, I know how hard it is to make ends meet. We have mountains of medical bills, co-pays, drug costs and basically a lot of catching up to do financially after our lives were turned upside down by this wretched disease.
I understand that many of you are not financially able to support the foundation, and I value your support in other ways, like the way you welcome newbies, help a newly diagnosed mets-sister, and basically brighten everyone’s day with your words. But I have a suggestion, if you have friends or your employer is in a position to support the foundation, it can make a huge difference.
You can direct them to the main website and they can read about all we do. If they want a formal proposal, I can provide them with all the material they need.
When a person makes a donation on our new donation page, there is a link that you can click called “tell a friend” and it sends your friend/boss/Aunt Tilly a note that says, “I just donated to NSBCF and wanted to ask you to, too!”
We are growing and more and more people are reaching out to us. This is what we are raising money for:
Our Website and Forum
The main website was designed for a woman who needs to learn everything she can about her disease so she can make the best medical decisions for her. She learns about her cancer, how to read her path report, and learns her options. These options include surgical and reconstruction options, chemotherapy options, hormonal choices, etc. Then she can learn about how to cope with the side effects of treatment and all the little details her doctor doesn’t tell her about. But then we go one step further, we offer our Support Forum.
You wonderful women have made this the warmest place on the internet. Anyone can ask any question and we gather around her and help her with the best answer we know, offer our own experience, and then if that isn’t enough, Constantine comes in as the icing on the cake. How cool is our Message Forum!?
We need money to make the site better and the forum better. We need to reach more women. Part of that will be educational pamphlets that will be in local doctor’s offices directing women to our site and forum.
The Before Forty Initiative
I don’t have to tell you about all the precious angels we have lost because they were diagnosed too late. Following the ACS’s gold standard of getting your first mammo at age forty is deadly advice. Especially if you are African American or carry the BRCA gene. We want to change this forever. We are dedicated to getting the word out to all young women to get her first mammo by 35 and if she is African American or from a high risk group, she should be scanned at 30.
It doesn’t stop there. We all know that mammo’s don’t always pick up abnormalities when a woman is young because they have dense breasts. We want to change insurance companies coverage plans so they automatically cover breast ultra sounds and breast MRIs, particularly if there is a suspicious finding is present.
What’s more, we want to get the word out to every single woman on this planet to never, ever “watch and wait.” If you have a TNBC and you “watch and wait” for it to grow for six months, it could spread to your nodes and other organs.
I am the perfect example of both parts of this program. My first cancer was only found because I had Dr. Belt and Suspenders, who insisted I get a baseline at 35. I got mammos every year after that and at 39 they saw a spot that had not been there before. It was very hard to find because it was at the chest wall. If I had waited until 40, the scan would have read as normal tissue. I had an extremely aggressive TNBC tumor. Can you imagine if I had not found it when I did? Now look at my second cancer. Many of you were around when that happened. Remember I knew there was a lump. I was told it was the hematoma healing. I was told to “watch and wait.” I was put off because they said a biopsy would “create more scarring” in my breast. By the time I finally got that cancer diagnosed, the tumor was 2.5 centimeters and I had 4 positive nodes with extra nodal extension. I do not want anyone to ever have that happen to them.
We also need to stress the importance of in between time diligence. If a woman has a clear mammo, she should not believe that she doesn't have to think about it again until next year. Until we can find better diagnostics, women need to know, mammo or no mammo, BSE, EVERY MONTH, to make sure nothing pops up between routine screening.
To get the Before Forty Initiative on the map, we have to raise money for:
Publicity, public service announcements, educational pamphlets, lobbying the government, lobbying insurance companies... basically forming a No Surrender Army to save womens lives. This army has equipment too. We are raising money for our own mobile mammography buses so we can directly get the message out to young, African American women.
The Sister Corps
Those of you who are Team Leaders are going to need a lot of supplies and that also includes all the info that we can provide information about our site, our programs and what the Sister Corps can do locally.
The No Surrender Breast Cancer Foundation Research Grant
(AKA “our baby’)
We know how badly we want to end breast cancer. We don’t want to lick any more yogurt caps. We want to be directly involved in the research that is actually finding a cure! And if not a cure, better therapy, targeted treatments, better diagnostics, and gene therapy. Every year we will select ten of the most promising research and then present them to our Medical Advisory Board and narrow the choices to three. And from the three, YOU will vote on what YOU want to support. Then, we will make a grant to that researcher and his/her project, and be active in ending this disease forever.
So you can see why we need money! We are actively writing grants and approaching corporate America for help. If you have someone who would like to help us become all we can be- so we can help women all over the world, please tell them about us.
I am working very hard to make this what you want it to be. I have listened to your wishes, cried with you when we lost a sister, and I know, together, we will change things, forever.
Love,
g
Click HERE to go to our Support page
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WE WILL PREVAIL
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