Cancer used to be a “foreign word” to Kristen Connolly.
She’d never known anyone fighting the disease, and it didn’t run in her family history. Then, in the span of only a few years, both her uncle and her mother were diagnosed with lung cancer.
Her uncle had smoked only briefly many years before his diagnosis, while her mother had never smoked at all. That didn’t change their prognoses. By the time it was discovered, the cancer had spread to her uncle’s lymph nodes and to her mother’s brain.
Already reeling from learning about her uncle, her mother’s diagnosis “absolutely devastated” Connolly. Despite the fact they lived thousands of miles apart, they were still “best friends, literally” – all the way up to the day she passed away after a long and valiant struggle.
“I want her to live on through me,” Connolly says. “She’s not here in person anymore, but I know she’s still here in other ways.”
To continue her mother’s legacy, Connolly got involved with the Free to Breathe organization – a national nonprofit group that raises money and awareness to continue the fight against lung cancer.
This Saturday, Connolly and other members of the State College community will take part in the second annual Free to Breathe walk against lung cancer. The event starts at 9:40 a.m. at Tom Tudek Memorial Park, and will feature survivors and supporters in a 5K run, a one-mile walk and a kid’s race.
Connolly knows that State College is a generous community committed to fighting cancer – but says that lung cancer advocacy struggles against a powerful “smoker’s stigma.” That’s the idea that lung cancer patients have brought their diagnosis upon themselves, even though the disease can affect nonsmokers and smokers alike.
In part because of the stigma, lung cancer receives significantly less research money than other cancers, even though it’s more deadly than breast, rectal and colon cancers combined.
“The survival rate is only 16 percent over five years,” Connolly says. “It’s a pretty scary diagnosis, and people really don’t know just how deadly this disease is.”
When Connolly took part in the first Free to Breathe event in State College in 2012, she realized she was not alone. She says she used to feel “like no one cared about lung cancer,” but the event introduced her to a community that supported her and her struggles.
“Of course we want to raise money,” Connolly says of Saturday’s event, “but we also want people to come and enjoy the company of others who are either going through that fight, or who have lost loved ones. We want to be able to rally as a community and be there for each other.”
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