A team of five cancer advocates are excited to announce that the article we wrote was published today! A year ago today, Diane Manii and I were travelling to Banff Alberta to participate in an international conference for professionals who support people living with cancer. My goal was to represent people with lung cancer and introduce myself to as many people as I could, kindly challenging them to do more for people affected by lung cancer. I brought a pile of Canadian flag pins from the office of Catherine McKenna, my elected official. I’d been to her office for pins quite a few times ..read more

Lung cancer advocacy offers a world of opportunity! A variety of sizes and shapes so that everyone who wants to stand up for people affected by lung cancer can find ways to apply best practices to make a difference! Let me give you a small taste by telling you about my day yesterday, and some of the terrific teams I get to work with … International Health Advocate Chris Draft called from Atlanta yesterday morning. Great call: inspiring and energising! Team Draft invests in lung cancer advocates: supporting, training, encouraging. Chris is a strategic big picture thinker, always challenging peo ..read more

World Lung Cancer Day is August 1, and this year the focus was on team building for a group of over 30 lung cancer advocates from across North America! Team Draft gathered advocates online to welcome author and inspirational keynote speaker Marques Ogden as he – for the first time – shared his own personal story of losing his grandmother, the matriarch of his family, to lung cancer. Not everybody is ready to be an advocate after they lose someone they love. We recognise that this can be a very hard thing to do. It takes courage to share one’s story, so it is important that we welcome people an ..read more

More good news from lung cancer researchers! Early data indicates that Repotrectinib shows promise for treating people with ROS1 or NTRK lung cancer! Turning Point Therapeutics is working with the US-FDA to modify this clinical trial to potentially accelerate approval times.* We are very excited about this future potential for our friends with ROS1 or NTRK lung cancer! John has been living with NTRK lung cancer for 6.5 years. John has been living with NTRK lung cancer for 6.5 years. Thanks to his oncologist, Bayer, and permission from Health Canada, he has been able to take Larotrectinib (whic ..read more

My hope factor increased today and I hope yours will as well! I got an update today that improved my world! Researchers are working on bringing a whole lot of good our way, and I can’t wait to tell you about it! Over a year ago I participated in the American Association for Cancer Research Scientist <–> Survivor Program. Today through Wednesday, the AACR is putting on a Virtual Meeting on COVID-19 and Cancer. I really want to tell you about two virtual sessions I attended today: one about clinical trials, and the other about vaccine development. I was very excited to hear the clinical tr ..read more

In a challenging season, there are opportunities to be seized. When life is hard, there is still good going on. Here are three more reasons to hold onto hope… 3) Canadian Cancer Society/Canadian Institutes of Health Research Cancer Survivorship Team Grants Last summer Jennifer Wilson, director of research operations for the Canadian Cancer Society, asked me to serve with some awesome review panelists to help decide which survivorship team research projects would receive funding. The $10 million competition, CCS/CIHR Cancer Survivorship Team Grants, had the goal of improving health outcomes fo ..read more

Research makes a world of difference! Research is a reason to hope, and daily there are advances in cancer research. Patients, survivors and caregivers can speak into the research process, making it better. There is need for people who have cancer experience to participate as research advocates. I’m glad to finally have my computer back and running, the corrupted hard drive replaced. Not having a computer made life and advocacy much more challenging. Even without it, I’ve been busy with a lot of lung cancer activities, including ongoing research advocacy with the Canadian Cancer Trials Group a ..read more

Thank you for supporting Team Jill in the Super Bowl Challenge! Together we raised over $1000., whether you count in Canadian or American dollars! That is over $1000 that would not have been raised if Team Jill hadn’t taken action to raise lung cancer funds, and if some of you hadn’t taken action to give them. Thank you! Thank you also for your many encouraging words of support, the “likes”, retweets, shares, etc. This kind of support matters too! While writing this, another person gave $50. Thank you! All together so far, the Super Bowl Challenge has raised over $77,000 USD. That is money tha ..read more

In my earlier days advocating for people affected by lung cancer, I heard rumours that the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) didn’t give a fair amount of funds for lung cancer research. I did not know if that was true and believed it was important to find out. I determined to investigate, and learn how to advocate about this, but the Canadian Cancer Society seemed so big. I felt intimidated at first and did not know how to start. Advocacy is relational work, and with encouragement from Chris Draft I worked on getting to know people at the CCS (and other organizations) and building relationships. P ..read more

I won’t lie. This past month has been a challenging season, due to pain, nausea, fatigue and breathing challenges. Living with cancer can be very challenging, but thankfully the pain, nausea and fatigue are improving. I’ve had to hunker down and rest a lot, but am thankful to still be able to spend a little time with people, get some exercise and continue to do some advocacy work. We don’t get to choose all of our life circumstances, but we often get choice in how we respond. We can control the things we can control. Choosing to give thanks even in the midst of challenges can be a real game ch ..read more