Friday, July 23, 2010

A reminder from my mentor of why we raise money for LIVESTRONG...

My mentor sent this email to all of us who are part of his fundraising team for the LIVESTRONG Challenges. I thought I'd share this with my readers:
Hi to all my mentees (280 of you now!!) and the volunteer fundraising mentors across the U.S.
A very close friend's mom was diagnosed one week ago with metastasized pancreatic cancer. I made the suggestion to the mom to call the toll-free LIVESTRONG Survivor Care phone line.
 
Many of you 280 fundraisers likely have not had the time to explore www.livestrong.org and may not know what Survivor Care is. Find a few minutes. It gives specific meaning to everything we do, and explains where the donated money goes. It's right on the home page.
 
Although the response time to a first "I have cancer; help me" phone call is nominally 48 hours, Rheda (the mom) was called TWICE on the very day she called (yesterday).
 
I had figured that I'd try to pull a string or two (you know, I've volunteered for 10 years and raised a lot of $$). As you'll read below, before ANY strings could be pulled, the Survivor Care people had already spoken to Rheda twice. Incredible.
 
Read below. It's the e-mail that was sent to me just now. Again, it's a small but clear window into what LIVESTRONG and Survivor Care do.
 
When you ask for donations, you can tell the people you're asking that THIS is where the money goes.
Best wishes to you all. Thank you for everything you do.
 
Hi Michael,
 
Sorry I missed your call yesterday. I was out of the office. After receiving your message, I spoke with our SurvivorCare intake staff this morning. They are really amazing, and they indicated that they spoke with Rheda twice yesterday afternoon. One of the things they did was to refer her to EmergingMed for clinical trials matching, and they were in the process of following up with them to make certain that their staff reached out to Rheda right away. In addition, SurvivorCare will call Rheda back today to make certain that she has seen the NexCura Profiler Cancer Tools that are on our website (www.livestrong.org/treatmentoptions). This online tool can help Rheda and her loved ones learn about the pros and cons of different treatment options for her type of cancer. They are free, and she can enter the diagnostic information on her own or with a health care provider to get impressive and current information to help her make treatment decisions.
We are so sorry that Rheda and her family are faced with this diagnosis, Michael. Please let us know if there is anything else we can do to help.

Warmest regards,
Lee

Michael D. Wolf, Ph.D.
Region 2 Mentor

To be a part of the amazing work that LIVESTRONG does for people like Rheda and her family, please consider donating to my Philadelphia LIVESTRONG Challenge account. For every donation of $100 or more from now through August 1, I will send an autographed LIVESTRONG Wristband (from the With The Band Project) or a t-shirt - your choice!  http://philly2010.livestrong.org/ricarockstheride