Stanford, CA. Bay Area lung cancer survivors Molly Golbon and Brenda Brewer will represent Team Draft at Stanford Stadium on Saturday. The survivors will watch the Stanford Cardinal take on the visiting USC Trojans. #changingthefaceoflungcancer
Molly Golbon doesn't take much for granted these days.
The 39-year old married working mom of two knows life can take unexpected turns. For her, it came with a pain in her throat, tiredness, and a cough that wouldn't go away.
"I went in for an MRI, and that's when they found there was something on the MRI," Golbon recalled. That something turned out to be lung cancer. "I think when they told me it was lung cancer, I thought it can't be. It can't be. It's probably bronchitis or pneumonia, it's not that."
Unfortunately, it was.
Until her diagnosis, Golbon, like many people, thought only smokers got lung cancer.
Brewer, a non-smoker, also has a point she wants to emphasize.
“I just want to make sure that everybody knows that really anybody with lungs can get cancer,” she said. “It’s just not a smoker’s disease any more. It’s every-day people.”
A story published last year at www.webmd.com supports Brewer’s statement, noting that research shows that aggressive lung cancer cases in the United States and United Kingdom are on the rise among nonsmokers.
The same story also says that experts “can’t explain why nonsmokers are a growing proportion of lung cancer diagnoses, or why women seem especially vulnerable.”
Brewer, 52, happily tells us that she is not going through the fight alone.
She stumbled upon a support group a few months ago when she woke up in the middle of the night and noticed former NFL and Stanford player Chris Draft on a TV commercial talking about his wife Keasha’s death from lung cancer in 2011.
Source: http://blogs.mercurynews.com/hssports/2016/04/05/11432/
Team Draft’s goals are to create a unique experience for participating survivors and to raise awareness on a local, national, and international level by using each game and each survivor’s story to weave a broader narrative about the state of cancer and the hope that now exists for those battling the disease.
Special thanks to the Stanford University, Stanford Cancer Center, Kaiser Health, Matt Doyle and all of our Team Draft supporters for helping make this event possible.
Donate now to Support the National Campaign to Change the Face of Lung Cancer! www.teamdraft.org
