Cambia employees (pictured above) celebrate with the community as the Knight Cancer Challenge reaches its goal. Two Cambia employees (below) share their personal stories.
If you haven’t battled cancer directly, odds are you know a friend or family member who has -- as members of the Cambia work family have.
When learning she had lung cancer last year, “All I could think about was being sick all the time and losing my hair,” said Portland-based Claims employee Kathy Webber. “After consulting other oncology clinics in the greater Northwest, I knew the suggested treatment plan from the doctors at the Knight Cancer Institute was the most cutting-edge treatment I could get.”
Mike Hebert of Real Estate and Facilities was diagnosed with one of the most aggressive cancers known, Burkitt’s lymphoma, then reclassified to Double Hit Lymphoma. “Hearing you have cancer is scary enough but then they told me I was stage four and needed to start treatment immediately,” he recalls.
Mike and Kathy faced down the fear of cancer with caring, effective treatment. Kathy worked with the Knight Cancer Institute’s clinic within Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland, where she says, “the nurses and other employees who treated me were the best of the best.” When Mike started treatment at Virginia Mason in 2013, his oncologist estimated Mike had 30 days to live without treatment. After a stem cell transplant at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) in 2014, he is cancer free. “The teams at Virginia Mason and SCCA saved my life,” said Mike.
For both of our colleagues, what may have seemed impossible at the onset became possible.
There have been more remarkable cancer-related feats of late in the Pacific Northwest. Last week, Cambia Health Foundation announced it had donated $4 million to the Doernbecher Children’s Hospital Foundation as part of Oregon Health and Science University’s (OHSU) Knight Cancer Challenge. This sizable Cambia grant will help improve the quality of life for young patients who need palliative care – a holistic approach for individuals and families living with serious illnesses – through research and education.
Cambia’s donation, which comes on the heels of an additional $1 million gift in April to the Knight Cancer Challenge, helped trigger a $500 matching donation to OHSU from Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny. The collective $1 billion will help back “the first large-scale program dedicated to early detection of lethal cancers.” Through this research, successful stories like Kathy and Mike’s of recovery and prevention will become more commonplace.
“Thank you for supporting the Knight Cancer Challenge so that we can have more success stories like mine,” shares Kathy.
“Thanks to your support of facilities like OHSU Knight Cancer Institute that are making medical advances to find a way to end cancer,” said Mike, “I have beat this horrible disease.”
