Last weekend, April 29 - May 1, 2016, I was lucky enough to attend the LUNGevity Hope Summit held in Washington, DC. Expense paid by LUNGevity. I cannot even begin to express how inspirational, educational, loving and supportive those 3 days were.
Each day we were lucky enough to have physicians and survivors from all over the world come in and speak to us. Some of the topics were:
- Nutrition
- Palliative Care
- Research and Development
- Survivorship
- Immunotherapy
- And many more
As a cancer patient, we depend upon our family for support, love and encouragement. But, to be honest, sitting in a room with 200 other Lung Cancer Patients has given me more than I could ever give back to them. It is truly amazing to sit at a table with 10 other people who TRULY know what is going on with you physically and emotionally. As a example, as a lung cancer survivor we cough. There are different types of coughs. Sometimes we need a drink of water. Sometimes we need a tissue. Sometimes we need someone to tap our back. The most amazing thing to me was sitting there and the person to my right or left, everytime, knew exactly what I needed. It was so uplifting to sit next to a Stage 4 survivor who was diagnosed 14 years ago.
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| 10 or MORE years survival |
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| Look at how many new drugs were FDA approved in 2015 |
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My special friends I made - too many to get photos with all of them
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I truly am a believer that we cannot go through this journey without other survivors to help each other. Just talking to others can lift for spirits to a level you never knew existed since being diagnosed. As a result, I am dedicating myself to helping others.
To all my brothers and sisters from LUNGevity Hope Summit 2016 - I love you all. To my fellow cancer survivors, WE CAN DO THIS TOGETHER!!
Thanks for this excellent blog, Jennifer. Would you be interested in joining me in a quest to get a basic right? This would be for the goal of having cancer patients recognized under international law to the Right of Persons with Disabilities to economic and social self determination, for anyone who has a life threatening illness - that such persons should have the right to devote 40 hours per week to the cause of helping find eradicative treatments. The participant would be definable as working as an active research partner if they are actively engaged in PoG research [personalized onco-genetic] research - and all other forms of eradication-oriented projects.
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