THE KSN DREAM HOUSE FOR THE CURE

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Local Komen affiliate has big plans for the future

by Anita Cochran
KSN News

WICHITA, Kansas -- As excited as the local activists at the Susan G. Komen for the Cure office were to hear they would be receiving a big donation later this year, they were just as eager as everyone else to get to work.

A long time Komen volunteer, and now president of the Mid-Kansas Komen affiliate, Teresa Carter has known for years that breast cancer isn't just a problem for women.

"It impacts everybody's life. Just because you don't have the disease, if your wife does you're going through that with her."

The response she received pitching the idea of KSN's Dream House for the Cure to the people who could help build it confirmed it.

"Those sub's and the people that do the framing and all that stuff have been impacted -- a sister-in-law, a story of a wife, sisters mothers, aunts -- so those men who are in that male-dominated field have been impacted."

While Teresa and her volunteers won't be pounding the nails, they hope to be on site often.

"What we have to do is provide information to all those subcontractors so when they go home they are asking their significant others -- their wives, their daughters, their mothers -- 'have you had a mammogram?' That is absolutely significant to us," said Peggy Johnson, Mid-Kansas education chair.

Already those signing on have asked for logos to put on their trucks -- a visible sign they are joining the fight against breast cancer. The CEO of the national Susan G. Komen for the Cure told me recently, supporting her organization is truly a fight against all cancers.

"So the beauty of what we do here at Komen -- beyond saving lives from breast cancer -- it's a lot of scientific, discoveries and lot of targeted therapies, etc. that are developed in the name of breast cancer can also be used in other types of cancer."

Back here at home, Komen works in 99 Kansas counties, and every two years it scrutinizes, examines and redirects its efforts.

"Our community profile tells us that rural women are not being screened at the rates urban women are."

Right now there is still a push to get more mammograms into rural Kansas and with the money from KSN's Dream House, the Komen groups hope to do better at that and hopefully add new services for breast cancer survivors.

"We have heard this over and over again, that women, once they've been diagnosed with breast cancer, and even after they've finished treatment, they feel like they're alone."

While a woman undergoes breast cancer treatment, she typically finds support from family, friends and her medical staff. It's when she's dealing with life, after all, that Komen believes there is an unmet need.

"But we know, research shows us, they need to be reevaluated when they go back to work. Can they sit in the same chair they always sat in before? Can they do the same tasks that they've done before? Do they now need a task where they can sit down four hours a day rather than stand up for eight hours a day?"

The project isn't ready to go public yet, but once KSN's Dream House for the Cure is built and sold we hope another announcement will follow.

"We're able to take something we've dreamed about for years and I think it's going to happen so that's great!" said Teresa.

This has been a massive project that we know will help change the lives of thousands of women and men across Kansas.

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