A hairy leg could save a life.
Three years ago Natacha Ruberto died suddenly from a brain tumor, despite being initially told by doctors it wasn’t much to worry about.
A year later her mother Joanne and cousin Jackie were discussing ways to honour Natacha’s memory, inspired by the annual Movember campaign.
In the end they decided to challenge women to forgo shaving their legs for a month, deeming their fundraising effort Jan-U-Hairy.
“I said if you’re serious, I have an idea. Let’s do brain cancer research. This is our third year,” Ruberto said.
Brain cancer is often overlooked when fundraising, in favour of more well-known types of cancer, like breast and prostate.
According to braintumour.ca, every day 27 Canadians are diagnosed with a brain tumour. About 55,000 Canadians live with brain tumours, about eight in every 100,000 people.
“My goal is to eradicate this thing or to at least have it under control,” Ruberto said. “We can’t do anything for my daughter, but we can for other people.”
The Canadian Cancer Society’s Maria Cabral said independent fundraisers like this can have major impacts, especially in less well-known areas.
“Brain cancer is still today a very hard to treat cancer. And it doesn’t get as much publicity or as much airtime as breast cancer or any other type of cancer. But the reality is that it’s still a very hard to treat cancer and there is a very high mortality rate,” Cabral said.
“We have come a long way with research, so it’s just great when people are courageous enough to share their stories of what they’ve been through, the struggles and the loss of somebody, but they’re carrying on that memory.”
Contact the Canadian Cancer Society at 344-5433 or visit www.cancer.ca for more information on how to donate or participate.
In two years the campaign has raised more than $15,000.
