Friday, March 11, 2011

Help Stephanie Gatschet Fight Lung Cancer!

Stephanie Gatschet (Madison) has a cause that is near and dear to her heart, and incidentally to mine too.  When her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer 5 years ago, she began supporting the National Lung Cancer Partnership in an effort to educate people about the disease and raise money.  Says Stephanie: "The stigma of lung cancer being a smoker's disease really stands in the way of getting the proper funding and awareness," she points out. "And it's so unfortunate, not only because it doesn't really matter if a person smoked or not -- no one deserves to get cancer -- but more than half of the people diagnosed with lung cancer now are non-smokers! Everyone should know about that, and the more we can remove the lung cancer conversation from the smoking relation, the more progress we'll make in curing it."  And this is so true.  One of my very dear friends was diagnosed with lung cancer back in July and she never smoked a day in her life.  I can't thank Stephanie enough for her part in raising awareness of this disease and on March 20 she is organizing a fundraiser, the Free To Breathe fundraising yogathon at Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge, CA, which is actually where many of AMC's location shots are filmed.  Cameron Mathison (Ryan), Christina Bennett Lind (Bianca), Denise Vasi (Randi) and Jordi Vilasuso (Griffin) will all be taking part in the fundraiser with Stephanie and you can too!  Sign up or donate at FreeToBreathe.org

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