THUNDER BAY – The Tbaytel Luncheon of Hope is back for the first time since 2019.
It's the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Foundation’s first major event since the start of the pandemic, and the group was was thrilled to create a fun and safe environment to celebrate resiliency in overcoming a very difficult period in healthcare.
“It’s a really special event,” said Andrea Docherty, Program Director for the Regional Cancer Program, "The general cause is breast cancer awareness, and an opportunity for women who have experienced breast cancer and their families and friends to gather in celebration of their journey, and an opportunity for us to talk about some advances in breast cancer and really just spread awareness.”
Since its inception, this event has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for breast cancer research, education, diagnosis and treatment through the Northern Cancer Fund, and 100% of the funds raised stay in Northwestern Ontario to help support such initiatives as the Linda Buchan Centre, breast MRI, and the Screen for Life Coach.
This year’s luncheon is focused, once again, on celebrating local survivors and healthcare professionals, all of whom strongly urge everyone to go get screened.
“What I’m really pushing today is the need for people to go get their mammograms. There is no family history of breast cancer in my family, I never even thought about it,” said Kelly Arnold, event speaker and cancer survivor,
“I typically went in for my mammogram as per usual, they asked me to come back to get it double checked, that’d happened before and I never gave it a second thought, and they found out I had breast cancer, again, no family history whatsoever”
Even after the tumour was found, Arnold could not locate it through self-examination and that’s why she urges everyone to go get properly screened when possible, especially with the reluctance some people are having to go get preventative healthcare like Mammograms do to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s kind of not something documented, but, we notice, and I spoke to all my colleagues and they are the same, because of delay in doing, for people who have symptoms, to address it to their family doctor and then start investigations,” said Dr. Mohammed Ibrahim, Breast Cancer Oncologist,
“We are actually starting to see more advanced cases, like, there is no endoscopy for GI, for stomach and bowel, mammogram is not as before, so the number of patients getting mammogram is less now because of the capacity of the hospital and also because of patients, some of them are very afraid to come to the hospital because of COVID.”
Tickets to the Tbaytel Luncheon of Hope cost $75. Roughly 300 people attended the event.
