THUNDER BAY — Eight local physicians swapped their scrubs for sequins to raise funds for the hospital's laboratory services.
"This is a group of really unsung heroes who work night and day to provide data to all the doctors that really guides patient care. Without them, we wouldn't be able to provide effective care in my opinion,” said co-organizer Joseph Del Paggio.
Dancing with the Docs, a local fundraiser inspired by Dancing with the Stars, was held at the Superior Inn on Saturday evening. This year, they raised over $120,000, the finally tally is still being calculated.
“We had an incredible amount of community support this time around, but we also have our doctors and dancers who are fundraising. We're doing very well,” said Patricia Del Paggio.
The siblings combined their passions and created the event together, in honour of their mother who passed away from cancer in 2019.
Joseph is chief of the oncology department at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre and Patricia is a drama teacher.
The inaugural event was held in 2020, and with great success of the second in 2022, Patricia and Joseph brought the event back for the third time this year.
Joseph said the event raised $200,000 back in 2022.
“That went toward funding of the PET scanner for the hospital that's now being utilized by numerous patients, many of whom have cancer and many of whom benefit greatly from this,” Joseph said.
It was very successful and we thought it would be a great way to focus the spotlight on another really important department of the hospital, the department of laboratory medicine." said Joseph.
“We were kind of the catalyst in getting that pet scanner to our community. Our focus every year is going to be on cancer care because that is something our mother went through and we want to help that within our community," said Patricia.
There were 500 tickets available. They all were sold by the dancers and the doctors, before getting out to the public.
Patricia said the plan is to continue holding the event every two years.
