Tuesday, February 1, 2011

YOU HAVE SAVED LIVES!

Yes, you! Anyone who has supported, participated, volunteered, or shared info about Terry’s Walk has saved lives. The walk is not only a memorial to my mom; it is an educational event about melanoma. The money raised from the walk supports a seminar (Diagnosis and Treatment of Early Melanoma and Non-melanoma Skin Cancer: Practical Pearls for the Primary Care Provider at Harvard Medical School) dedicated to training primary care doctors and other healthcare professionals on how to spot melanoma at its earliest stages. Melanoma is CURABLE 90% of the time when caught early, and the best way for it to be caught early is through a primary care physician especially if for those who don’t regularly see a dermatologist. The hard part of our focus is there is little opportunity to see the wide scale effects. Most likely we aren’t going to get a letter telling us how a doctor identified a melanoma, removed it, and treated it, therefore saving them. That person may not know their doctor attended this seminar, or even how that seminar came about. But as fate would have it, a friend recently shared her story with my dad. She had gone to her doctor for a normal physical. During the exam the doctor noticed a mole on her back. The doctor commented that he had attended a seminar on melanoma and skin cancer, and felt her mole should be removed. The doctor removed it and upon biopsy it was determined to be melanoma. This woman asked about the seminar… It was at Harvard Medical School early last spring… it was the seminar that YOU all helped create! Terry’s Walk 2011 is your hero’s parade! Be part of the hero’s parade on September 17, 2011.
You need to know you are a hero; you are making a difference and YOU HAVED SAVED LIVES!!