Extraordinary Offering v. 4

Extraordinary Offering 

The inspiring stories of volunteerism with the Foundation For Molecular Medicine

This is a series of stories from the volunteers at the Foundation For Molecular Medicine, who offer the extraordinary gift of themselves to the mission of the organization. The stories reflect the diversity of personal experiences each volunteer brings to the organization along with their motivation and desire to improve the lives of others. 

Volunteerism truly is the Extraordinary Offering.

My Story – For Family and Friends

By: Tom Szczepanski

The opportunity to simply give of one’s time to charitable organizations, by walking or donating financially is so very important and can’t be overlooked.  Having lost two family members and a cousin to cancer it was a very easy decision to give my time to volunteer for the Foundation For Molecular Medicine.  It was with my sister in law Carol’s passing that I felt I really had to step up to the plate and do something more.

It is particularly tough to watch people suffer, especially the ones you love.  Carol was a true fighter against breast cancer, fighting against this dreaded disease for 20+ years.  That whole time, I never understood why technology wasn’t able to help keep her cancer in check. While Carol struggled and fought to beat cancer, she was also very caring and giving, even during the rough times. It is in the memory of her spirit of giving to others, to fight and beat cancer that the Foundation For Molecular Medicine exists.

My Dad is one of the reasons I chose to become a volunteer for the Foundation For Molecular Medicine. He gave so much of his time to charitable organizations in the community, he firmly believed in giving back to the community. He lost his life in his early 80’s to cancer and while it is always tough to lose a parent, he has been an inspiration to me to give my time and energy by volunteering with charitable.

The Foundation For Molecular Medicine seeks to educate individuals on various issues from healthy living to the nontoxic diagnostics and therapies that are available. There are others that have lost their lives to cancer like Carol and my Dad, and to those who are currently fighting the disease we at the Foundation For Molecular Medicine are here to help make a difference.

The mission of the Foundation For Molecular Medicine is to support education on early detection of metastatic cancers, neurodegenerative diseases and promoting healthy lifestyles. Please check our web site at www.FFMM.org for further information.

Carol Szczepanski - my sister in law

Extraordinary Offering v.3

Extraordinary Offering 

The inspiring stories of volunteerism with the Foundation For Molecular Medicine

This is a series of stories from the volunteers at the Foundation For Molecular Medicine, who offer the extraordinary gift of themselves to the mission of the organization. The stories reflect the diversity of personal experiences each volunteer brings to the organization along with their motivation and desire to improve the lives of others. 

Volunteerism truly is the Extraordinary Offering.

My Story – National Cancer Survivor Day

By: Candace Shaw

Today is National Cancer Survivor Day, a day to celebrate friends and family that have struggled and became a survivor of Cancer. My mom is one of the survivors. This post is dedicated to my mom and her continued fight to live a healthy cancer-free life.

So often, one perceives volunteers to be completely selfless individuals who give of themselves to a cause in an effort to change the world for the better. Well, that really isn’t me: I am completely selfish with my volunteerism for the Foundation For Molecular Medicine. You see, about 5 years ago, my Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy followed by an unimaginable quantity of chemo-cocktails to ‘heal’ her. I was introduced to the work of the Foundation at the beginning of this year, the only thing I could think about was that if I help with this organization, it will keep my Mom here with me longer, keep her a breast cancer survivor for longer. Selfish, I know.

When someone you love has cancer everything changes. The focus moves quickly from complete and utter dismay to how to fight and beat this cancer into total remission.  I learned very quickly from my Mom’s cancer experience that the process of cancer treatment has not improved much over the past 20 years. Doctors don’t really have any new or improved answers. Instead, they have a somewhat general idea about what treatments might work based on their personal understanding of what has worked in the past for others inflicted: not very scientific to say the least. After cutting the cancer out, a series of immeasurable and unquantifiable processes occur. The chemo and radiation treatments become a mostly subjective patchwork of a small pool of Doctors perceptions of what could – hopefully – work. That method doesn’t really work for me since I am not someone that particularly enjoys banking on ‘hope’ when it comes to my family’s health.

Moreover, this cancer problem doesn’t begin and end with my Mom. Cancer seems drawn to my family like little flecks of metal to a giant magnet. Breast Cancer, Kidney Cancer, Thyroid Cancer, Colon Cancer, Bladder Cancer, Leukemia…the list goes on and on. The youngest family member that had cancer was 7 years old. My cousin’s daughter was diagnosed about a year after my Mom. Talk about one blow right after another!

 So today, on National Cancer Survivor Day, I am proud to say that my Mom is a survivor of Breast Cancer. As selfish as it is, I volunteer at the Foundation in an effort to keep her a survivor for a long time. The Foundation’s mission is to support education on early detection of metastatic cancers, neurodegenerative diseases and promoting healthy lifestyles. The Foundation does that by supporting students and universities that offer studies in advanced biotechnologies, molecular diagnostics and molecular treatment. As an FFMM volunteer I have an opportunity to bring my talent and skills to an organization that can make a difference in my Mom’s life and in my family’s life. Selfish in so many ways, but that is why I volunteer for the Foundation For Molecular Medicine.

Sue Shaw - 2 years later

Extraordinary Offering v.1

Extraordinary Offering 

The inspiring stories of volunteerism with the Foundation For Molecular Medicine

This is a series of stories from the volunteers at the Foundation For Molecular Medicine, who offer the extraordinary gift of themselves to the mission of the organization. The stories reflect the diversity of personal experiences each volunteer brings to the organization along with their motivation and desire to improve the lives of others. 

Volunteerism truly is the Extraordinary Offering.

My Story – Why I created the Foundation For Molecular Medicine

By: Frank Szczepanski

During 2011, my wife Carol was well into her third occurrence of metastatic breast cancer.  She was undergoing treatment at UChicago with a relatively mild form of chemotherapy that was administered 2-3 times a month.  I took her there for every IV Therapy and observed other patients in the waiting area – often 20-30 patients each visit. Usually they were not the same people, but their faces read the same: that look of suffering, or resignation for what they were about to experience.

You see, each time a patient’s name is called, then they need to have their vitals and blood pressure taken along with a blood sample which means a needle stick.  They then go back to wait for the laboratory to process their blood and produce a CBC (comprehensive blood count) report.   If satisfactory, their chemo will be prepared by the in-house pharmacy and then, the slow-drip of toxic chemicals takes place in one of the beds in the IV Therapy room. 

Each patient experiences the pain, the anxiousness, and subsequent side effects of today’s modern medical method for “curing” cancer.  The paradigm for diagnosis and treatment has not radically changed in over 25-50 years.

Knowing that my biotech company, IVDiagnostics, had developed a way to monitor Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) I wanted so badly to let each of patients (especially my wife) to have their oncologists monitor the root cause of metastatic disease, i.e. CTCs and

not just look at CBC counts and images from CT, PET or Bone Scans that can only detect solid tumors.  Patients need to know what is happening at the cell and molecular level inside their bodies; otherwise the oncologists have no true way of knowing if the patient is in remission, or if the treatment being prescribed is really working.

So we began the journey of Educating people on the need for Early Detection and Remediation of cancer as well as how to use healthy diet, exercise, lifestyles to prevent the onset of cancer.  Molecular analysis of captured CTCs is also available with today’s technology as we have proven in our laboratory – but patient’s need to know how and why this can be done much earlier than waiting for a solid tumor to appear.

My wife was a victim of 20 years of living with metastatic disease.  The treatment during 2011 seemed to work and her doctors declared that she was in remission.  Unfortunately in 2012, she suffered her fourth occurrence and her cancer had spread once again – this time to her abdomen and then to her lungs.  She passed, but her spirit lives on through the work of the Foundation For Molecular Medicine.

Carol Szczepanski

    

Carol Szczepanski was chosen as November’s Calendar Girl by the Pink Ribbon Society in 2011.  She was the strongest woman I ever knew. A true fighter who survived 20+ years of living with metastatic breast cancer.