Globe and Mail article - Saturday, September 20, 2008
The Gift: $167,000 and climbing
The Cause: Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre Foundation The Reason: To fund research and education for breast cancer reconstruction surgery.
When Jackie Stephen was diagnosed with breast cancer a couple of years ago she went through several surgeries and eventually had a mastectomy.
Immediately after the mastectomy, Ms. Stephen had breast reconstruction surgery at the Health Sciences Centre thanks to a new technique brought to the hospital by Dr. Ed Buchel.
"I couldn't believe this existed," Ms. Stephen recalled from her office in Winnipeg where she works as an executive at WOW! Hospitality Concepts, a restaurant company.
"I was just so impressed by the whole procedure. I basically look exactly the same as I did before."
A few months after the operation, Ms. Stephen and her husband, Doug, planned to have a dinner for friends to thank them for their support.
They turned the dinner into a fundraising event in May, 2007, called Keeping Abreast and raised $26,000 for cancer research.
The event's success prompted Ms. Stephen to ask the hospital if she could raise money for Dr. Buchel's work. They agreed and she organized an even bigger party last spring, attracting 400 people and raising $105,000.
There were various games on the "Bra dway Midway," including putting golf balls into various bras and taking a bra off of a mannequin with a fishing pole, as well as "boobie" prizes.
Ms. Stephen is already planning next year's evening and she has created the Keeping Abreast fund for year-round donations.
One donor has pledged $9,000 a year for four years.The operation "was such a big part of my recovery, I wanted to support it," she said. "This surgery is an extraordinary gift for women with breast cancer."
The Winnipeg Free Press - June 4th, 2008
Don't ignore tap on shoulder - It could be warning, or gentle request for donation to cancer program. Gordon Sinclair Jr.
I didn't know what to say. It was about a year and a half ago when I heard Jackie Stephen had breast cancer.
But instead of me having to reach out to her, she reached out to me. And to everyone else in her circle of friends.
Jackie wanted to share a story.
"This story is not so much about me or the illness, she wrote in an e-mail, "but the 'good' that actually came from having breast cancer."
So it was that we met in the lounge at 529 Wellington, the fine-dining steakhouse that's part of her husband, Doug Stephen's, WOW Hospitality restaurant group.
Jackie told the story, beginning with the warning she got in November, 2006, just before for her annual medical.
She felt a firm tap on the shoulder.
Except when she looked around, there was no one there. That wasn't the first time it had happened. The phantom shoulder tapping began just after her mother died in 1996.
Jackie was extremely close to her mother.
So, just to put her mind at rest, Jackie said she asked her doctor for a mammogram.
"And she said no."
Doctors prefer not to order mammograms before age 50 and Jackie was only 47.
But Jackie was adamant.
"I had a feeling," she said. "And I was quite forceful."
Just like that touch on her shoulder had been.
Fortunately, the doctor relented, because after Jackie had the mammogram, she had a biopsy then a lumpectomy and by February a doctor was recommending a mastectomy.
Jackie was caught off guard.
It was late afternoon the day after Valentine's Day, 2007. Soon she would be re-evaluating her life -- what she wanted from it and even whether she still wanted to be married.
She called Doug from her car, weeping inconsolably.
"He was devastated, too. He felt bad that I was alone. He felt helpless."
They both went home to tell her children, as they would later tell Doug's two boys.
She gathered her daughter and son in the living room.
Katie was 16 then. Dylan was 13.
"They sat sort of bewildered. And afraid. They really didn't say anything."
Until Dylan asked her if she was going to die.
"I said, 'No, don't think so.' "
Jackie tried to protect her children in different ways, including telling the other hockey moms, the teachers, and the kids' friends to look out for them. But, as I suggested earlier, it wasn't just her children's friends she reached out to.
"I had to find some positives in it. I just couldn't let it beat me. I needed to do something."
As she wrote later: "I decided to be very public, in order to warn my friends, male and female, that cancer can happen to any one of us and we should all be vigilant about being tested and taking care of ourselves. Selfishly, I also wanted and needed their love and support to help me get through this scary ordeal. I received an outpouring of concern, not only for me, but for my husband and children, as well. We were showered with cards, flowers, meals, visits and e-mails."
One of those e-mails arrived for Dylan from one of his 13-year-old pals.
The subject line was heart-wrenchingly perfect.
"Come to me," Dylan's friend wrote.
"Hey man, You got friends to bring u threw (sic) this like me, Reed, Alex, Tyler and other peeps to. Im always here for u ALWAYS! Your one of my best friends and u will always be. If u wanna spill the beans and if u need some help just come to me and BIG J will help u out! Ur mom is one tough cookie and she will make it through this (i no she will)"
Justin
Jackie had her mastectomy and reconstruction surgery in mid-March, 2007.
She is now cancer free.
But only because she wouldn't take no for an answer from her doctor.
And because she listened to that firm tap on the shoulder.
"When I think about it now, I believe it was her," Jackie said. "And that she doesn't feel that her work was done."
Neither, apparently, is Jackie's.
Last month, she and her friends raised $100,000 for the Health Sciences Centre Foundation and its breast-cancer reconstruction surgery program.
So be warned.
If you're out and about somewhere, and you feel a firm tap on your shoulder, don't be startled. It's not Jackie's mother trying to warn you about something.
It's probably just Jackie herself.
Hitting you up for a donation.
Check out the video at winnipegwomen.net of Dr. Ed Buchel in the Operating Room demonstrating some of the surgical and patient monitoring equipment purchased by Keeping Abreast.
Thank you Glenn Tinley and Winnipeg Women Magazine!
