Little Red Door Cancer Agency receives the majority of funding for our Mammography Assistance Program from the Indianapolis Affiliate of Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. This allows us to provide free breast health education, clinical breast exams, mammograms and diagnostic procedures to the women in Central Indiana who are without health insurance or financial resources.
This year's race will be held on Saturday, April 21st, 2012. The more team members that register and money raised, the more Susan G. Komen can grant to Little Red Door to provide life-saving services. Help support the promise to save lives and end breast cancer forever by stepping up and joining our team. Click to register!
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Central Indiana Race For The Cure raises money for local breast cancer patients
By Jenny Anchondo Fox59
April 12, 2011
More than $400,000 from the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure will go to the Little Red Door Cancer Agency, which offers life-saving resources to people who don't have medical insurance or the ability to afford proper care. A big part of that is the mammography assistance program, which offers free services to patients up until the point of diagnosis. 20,000 people who otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford screenings have been screened in 20 years of the mammography assistance program. 1,000 of those people found out they had cancer and were able to get treatment.
One of them is Jane Robertson, who discovered a lump but didn't have the proper insurance to get it checked out. "I needed a mammogram like yesterday. The night before, I was up late watching television and I happened to see an ad for the Little Red Door," Robertson said. She called and they got her a mammogram. They were also able to pay for an immediate biopsy, once the doctor deemed it necessary. "Within three days I was notified that I had two different types of breast cancer," Robertson said. She was already in stage three of four and kicking cancer became priority one. "When I saw the surgeon for the first time, I said, we have a free loader! Let's kill it," Robertson said. Chemotherapy, followed by radiation began instantly. "I have not decided what I want to be when I grow up, I've not jumped on all the furniture I'm going to jump on. I have tons of things to do yet. I was not done," Robertson said.
That's the goal of the Little Red Door's mammography program. To catch it early, so people can get past the cancer. "Lots of our clients are moms who are taking care of their families, their kids. Their health care is the last thing on their mind and it needs to be one of the first things on their minds," said Jane Ambro, a Cancer Prevention Specialist at Indiana University Health at Methodist Hospital. Ambro started the Little Red Door mammography program 20 years ago and now works in cancer prevention at Methodist Hospital, where many of the patients are referred. "If mom isn't happy and healthy, the family suffers. So that is the thing the Little Red Door can do is to be that conduit, between the exam that needs to be done and actually getting that person there," Ambro said.
Little Red Door even provides client navigators to help the patients emotionally and with the logistics, like scheduling and getting to appointments. "You've got individuals that are being helped with the mammography program that are making a choice between gas, food and a mammogram," Ambro said. Jane's post-cancer life includes short term memory loss, lymph edema and limited use of one arm. However, she takes it in with a quirky optimism.
"It's a situation where either you laugh or you cry. Crying takes a lot more energy, it makes you look as ugly as sin," Robertson said. She credits the Little Red Door with the fact that she now has the years to learn to garden, become a gourmet chef and spend time with her husband. She's speaking out, so others also act fast and have the same chance. "Don't waste time. Even if you think it is nothing, maybe it's something and you don't have the time to risk it. Get on it, get on it, get on it," Robertson said.
The majority of the Little Red Door's funding for the mammography assistance program comes from the Indianapolis affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. 20 years ago, the Little Red Door received $35,000 from Komen. This year, they'll be receiving about $408,000.
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