THUNDER BAY - When Jennifer Miller learned of her stage-four breast cancer diagnosis 14 years ago, at the age of 35, she said she did not know of anyone her age who had received such a diagnosis, leaving her feeling alone and isolated. But that soon changed.
“Going to the Cancer Centre and taking advantage of their supportive care and coming to events like the Luncheon of Hope really helped you realize there are other people going through the same thing,” she said.
“You feel badly for them but at the same time we can all come together and get through it and I think that’s the most important thing, knowing you are not alone and that there is a support for you.”
Miller shared her story as one of the keynote speakers at the 31st Annual TbayTel Luncheon of Hope on Friday.
The Luncheon of Hope has served as one of the Northern Cancer Fund’s flagship fundraisers and to date it has raised more than $575,000.
All of the money raised stays in the community and goes towards funding breast cancer research, education, diagnosis and treatment through the Northern Cancer Fund.
“This is an extremely significant fundraiser. It’s probably our flagship, because it has been around for so long,” said Haley Werbowetski, events officer at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Foundation.
“The fundraising is important, but for the women who have gone through breast cancer, have lost a loved one to breast cancer, or even just starting their journey it’s knowing that there is hope. It’s not a death sentence. Cancer is not what it looked like 50 years ago or even 30 years ago when this started.”
Werbowetski added that this year they are hoping to raise between $30,000 and $40,000, which will support initiatives like diagnostics at the Linda Buchan Breast Screening and Assessment Centre, equipment at Regional Cancer Care Northwest, and the Screen for Life Coach bus.
It’s also a time to allow breast cancers survivors and those just starting the journey of a diagnosis to meet and share their experiences and stories.
“The significance of having Jennifer’s story shared here today is knowing you are not alone,” Werbowetski said. “When you hear a cancer diagnosis or even a maybe, you feel like you’re the only person in the world who has heard that. Everything kind of disappears around you and you feel like you’re standing there by yourself. So when you hear even just one piece of a story that reflects your life and what you are going through can be a huge help.”
Miller said after her diagnosis she decided to turn her fear into action and changed her focus from ‘when am I going to die’ to ‘what can I do today?’
“I think that gives us hope and helps us heal when we put our minds toward the future and the positive and what we can do rather than the negative and what we can’t do, what we don’t have, and what we are going through,” she said.
“It’s turning our suffering into a sort of superpower and just living through it with grace and looking to others and outside of ourselves and trying to move through that in a really graceful way with smiles on our faces.”
Miller still has stage four breast cancer but she is not experiencing any pain now and she said her experience with treatment in Thunder Bay has been amazing.
“They made treatment doable, especially the nurses in the chemo unit and all the technicians in the radiation department,” she said. “They were the human side of things, sitting next to you while you did chemo, talking about their families.”
The Luncheon of Hope also included an art auction featuring one of Miller’s own pieces, as well as a keynote address from Dr. Alla Reznik, a professor at Lakehead University and senior scientist the Thunder Bay Regional Health Research Institute and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in physics of molecular imaging.
