Jeremy Smallwood - 2017 Super Bowl Challenge Check Presentation - Lahey Hospital
2017-03-03 08:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York)
Peobody, Mass. Lung cancer survivor-advocate Jeremy Smallwood chose Lahey Hospital as his beneficiary of the funds that he raised during Team Draft’s 2017 Lung Cancer Survivors Super Bowl Challenge.
The Super Bowl itself was amazing! The whole experience has been phenomenal…couldn’t ask for anything more! More than we expected. Thanks to Lahey Hospital and Team Draft for the experience and getting us here to Houston! Thanks to everyone that got us here. And thank you everyone from Lahey and Team Draft, family and friends and all other supporters. It was a great fundraising experience, enjoyable and friendly and addictive competition. It was a great once in a lifetime opportunity! ~ Amanda
Founded by Draft and his late wife Keasha, who died of lung cancer in 2011 at the age of 38, Team Draft is dedicated to raising lung cancer awareness and increasing badly needed research funding through its Campaign To Change The Face Of Lung Cancer, which is committed to shattering the misconception that lung cancer is a “smoker’s disease.” The centerpiece of Team Draft’s Campaign is its annual Lung Cancer Survivors Super Bowl Challenge.
As Draft explains, “the Super Bowl Challenge gives us a unique opportunity to use the overwhelming media coverage surrounding the Super Bowl as a platform to raise critical public awareness about lung cancer on an international level. With the game as a backdrop, we can use each survivor’s story to weave a broader narrative about the state of lung cancer and the hope that now exists for those battling the disease.” And Team Draft’s efforts are paying off.

“The Super Bowl Challenge achieves amazing things in terms of public awareness and changing perceptions about lung cancer,” says Dr. Ross Camidge, the Director of Thoracic Oncology at Colorado University Cancer Center, the cancer center where two of last year’s Super Bowl Challenge winners were treated.
In addition to raising critical public awareness, the Super Bowl Challenge also raises funds for lung cancer organizations and treatment centers across North America. Last year, participants who raised more than $1,000< during the Super Bowl Challenge were able to commit 50% of the funds they raised to a lung cancer organization or cancer center of their choice.
Thanks to the overwhelming success of our annual Super Bowl Challenge, Team Draft is maintaining its commit to 50% if the survivors raise over $1,000, but if they raise over $5,000, their designated beneficiary will receive 80% with the remaining 20% going to support Team Draft’s mission to change the face of lung cancer.
Of this aspect of the Super Bowl Challenge, Dr. Camidge says, “you need somebody working on the national level. You need somebody working on the local level. Everybody wins.”
For the survivors who participate, the Super Bowl Challenge is so much more than just a fundraiser.
“Team Draft has really helped boost our family’s spirits during this challenging time,” says Dr. Lucy Kalanithi. In 2015, Lucy and her husband, Dr. Paul Kalanithi, won Team Draft’s inaugural Super Bowl Challenge and were able to join Team Draft in Phoenix, Arizona for Super Bowl 49. Paul went on to write the bestselling memoir When Breath Becomes Air — a powerful and moving chronicle of his life and lung cancer journey — before passing away at the age of 37.
2016 Super Bowl Challenge winner, Kim Ringen says, “As a lung cancer survivor, I would highly recommend to anybody to put your hat in the ring because it is so uplifting to be associated with a group of people that are coming together to make a difference.”
To learn more about Team Draft’s 2017 Lung Cancer Survivors Super Bowl Challenge, visit https://www.crowdrise.com/2017SuperBowlChallenge.
Special thanks to the Jon Wilmot and the Wilmot Family, NFL, Astra Zeneca, and all of our Team Draft supporters for helping make this experience possible.
About Team Draft
Team Draft, an initiative of the Chris Draft Family Foundation, is dedicated to raising lung cancer awareness and increasing research funding by shattering the misconception that lung cancer is a “smoker’s disease.” Despite the fact that between 20,000 and 30,000 people who have never smoked are diagnosed with lung cancer in the United States each year, the smoking stigma negatively impacts lung cancer research funding, Team Draft is out to change all that. To learn more about Team Draft, share your story, or make a donation, please visit www.teamdraft.org.

Rest in Peace Elizabeth Dessureault
2017-03-04 08:00 - 19:00
Young Ontario mother who ‘changed the face of lung cancer’ dies at 27: ‘I was just so close to that miracle’
Blair Crawford, Postmedia News | February 28, 2017 |
“Anyone with lungs can get lung cancer,” Elizabeth Dessureault liked to say.
“I’m hoping that by sharing my story with others that I’m able to change the face of lung cancer to show that a 26-year-old, non-smoking, new-mom-to-be can get lung cancer, then anybody can.”
Dessureault was pregnant and working as a teacher in Fort McMurray, Alta., when she was diagnosed in April 2015 with advanced stage non-small cell adenocarcinoma lung cancer. She moved back to Ottawa to be near family after a doctor gave her a year to live. But she vowed to fight the disease, to enjoy life with her new son, Jack, and her husband, Dax, an RCMP officer and former standout Ottawa Gee-Gees basketball star.
That her fight ended Saturday morning in hospital in Ottawa has devastated her friends and family and thousands of followers who found support and encouragement on her ‘From Lizzie’s Lungs’ health blog and Facebook page.
She was 27.
“We are all desperately sad here today. She leaves a huge impression on all the people she touched,” said Dr. Paul Wheatley-Price, president of Lung Cancer Canada and an oncologist at the Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre.

“That’s what Lizzie did so effectively — to bring to the public eye in that lung cancer can affect anyone. Such a beautiful young woman and such a positive attitude. She really just lit up every environment she was in.”

Dessurault was five months pregnant when she began chemotherapy treatment. Her treatment continued after Jack was born, two months early. She wrote about his birth in an August 2016 blog post.
“That day was filled with so much happiness and love. It was also filled with fear – Fear of not getting to see my son grow and fear of missing out on so many of his life’s ‘firsts.’ We recently celebrated his first birthday – a day that I was so afraid of missing. I feel as though I am living on borrowed time and am so unbelievably grateful to be here to share each day with him.”
She signed each post with a sunny ‘Lizzie xo.’
“She really understood the diagnosis and understood it was a battle,” said Chris Draft, a former National Football League player who befriended Dessureault and her family after reading about her in a November 2015 Citizen story.
“From the beginning she accepted it and moved forward with her very positive mindset. It allowed her to make the most of every day, but at the same time to be realistic,” said the former linebacker, whose Chris Draft Family Foundation encourages healthy living, particularly around asthma and lung cancer. Draft’s “supremely fit” wife, Keasha, died in 2011 at age 37, less than a year after being diagnosed with lung cancer.

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That Dessureault was able to have her baby while undergoing cancer treatment, and enjoy nearly two years of life after her diagnosis, shows that progress is being made in treating the disease, Draft said.
“It says a lot about the advances that have been made. It’s very hard to see, but it’s very important to see,” he said. “When the drugs are working, your quality of life can be tremendous. That’s what hope looks like. But the fact that Liz passed shows there’s a still a lot of work to do.”
There was no history of lung cancer for Dessureault, a Cornwall, Ont., native and former teacher. She grew up in a non-smoking household and there were no hints of a genetic predisposition to the disease.
Though there is a strong correlation between smoking and lung cancer, fully 15 per cent of those diagnosed with the disease have never smoked. Lung cancer kills on average 10,000 women a year in Canada, twice the number who die of breast cancer; more in fact, than all other female cancers combined, Wheatley-Price said.
From the beginning she accepted it and moved forward with her very positive mindset
The five-year survival rate for someone with lung cancer is just 17 per cent, compared to 85 per cent for breast cancer. Though lung cancer causes 25 per cent of cancer deaths in Canada, it receives just seven per cent of the funding, he said.
Dessureault was fortunate that her tumour had a rare genetic marker known as ROS 1, which opened up the possibility of using a targeted treatment to attack the tumour with very little side effects.
Dessureault and her family were able to visit Disney World and took a Caribbean cruise during her illness. She and Dax were Draft’s guests at a 2016 Super Bowl party in San Francisco. She sold ‘Just Breathe’ bracelets and handbags to raise awareness. From Lizzie’s Lungs was named the top health blog of 2016.
But the good news turned bad last fall.
“These past two weeks have been incredibly challenging,” she wrote in November. “Unfortunately, last Tuesday we learned that the drug that I had taken since February, Lorlatinib, was no longer working and I had progression of disease… This time to both lungs.
“Despite the fact that we always knew that this could happen (and with lung cancer, there was a very high probability), I was just so close to that miracle. My NED (no evidence of disease) status was taken away from me much sooner than I had hoped.”
Living with cancer was her “new normal,” she wrote.
“Despite everything that has happened … I absolutely love my life. I consider myself to be one of the luckiest people in the world because I am surrounded by the most amazing people.”
In December she wrote that the cancer had spread to her bones and she was developing blood clots.
“On the bright side, my brain scan was clear! (I’ll take wins where I can get them!).”
Dessureault knew that people looked to her for inspiration, Draft said. She didn’t dwell on the hardest parts of her illness.
“It was important for her to stay positive to inspire people, so she didn’t want to go too deeply into where she was at,” Draft said, in a phone call from Atlanta. “She knew it was a battle. It was important to her to keep them upbeat.”
Elizabeth Dessureault’s funeral will be held Saturday, March 4 at 2 p.m. at Knox St. Paul United Church in Cornwall. There is no visitation.

Patty Watkins - 2017 Super Bowl Challenge Check Presentation - Emory Winship Cancer Institute
2017-03-13 08:00 - 20:00
Atlanta, GA. Lung cancer survivor-advocate Patty Watkins chose the Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute as her beneficiary of the funds that she raised during Team Draft’s 2017 Lung Cancer Survivors Super Bowl Challenge.
I’m so ready for a cure and for my own home team, Emory,( where I’ve been treated by their fantastic oncology radiation team for my brain mets as well as by Dr. Ramalingan for my lung cancer), to RISE UP like the Falcons. Praying for their researchers to find better treatments, or better yet, a cure. I’m ready for them to battle for me and so many others in Atlanta and across the country who are warriors waiting for a cure. I was able to RISE UP $6,200 in donations towards Cabral Franklin Fund at Emory’s Winship Cancer Center, through the Team Draft’s 2017 Lung Cancer Survivors Super Bowl Challenge. This fund is specifically set up to target lung cancer research specifically.

I thank The Chris Draft Family Foundation for their tireless efforts to celebrate survivors through experiences like this. Thank you Team Draft for your support and your mission to eradicate lung cancer and the stigma we all face. And helping to give hope to so many struggling with this disease. We thank you for knocking on the doors of all the research institutions across the world in our behalf as well. MAY THEY ALL RISE UP!

Founded by Draft and his late wife Keasha, who died of lung cancer in 2011 at the age of 38, Team Draft is dedicated to raising lung cancer awareness and increasing badly needed research funding through its Campaign To Change The Face Of Lung Cancer, which is committed to shattering the misconception that lung cancer is a “smoker’s disease.” The centerpiece of Team Draft’s Campaign is its annual Lung Cancer Survivors Super Bowl Challenge.
As Draft explains, “the Super Bowl Challenge gives us a unique opportunity to use the overwhelming media coverage surrounding the Super Bowl as a platform to raise critical public awareness about lung cancer on an international level. With the game as a backdrop, we can use each survivor’s story to weave a broader narrative about the state of lung cancer and the hope that now exists for those battling the disease.” And Team Draft’s efforts are paying off.
“The Super Bowl Challenge achieves amazing things in terms of public awareness and changing perceptions about lung cancer,” says Dr. Ross Camidge, the Director of Thoracic Oncology at Colorado University Cancer Center, the cancer center where two of last year’s Super Bowl Challenge winners were treated.
In addition to raising critical public awareness, the Super Bowl Challenge also raises funds for lung cancer organizations and treatment centers across North America. Last year, participants who raised more than $1,000< during the Super Bowl Challenge were able to commit 50% of the funds they raised to a lung cancer organization or cancer center of their choice.
Thanks to the overwhelming success of our annual Super Bowl Challenge, Team Draft is maintaining its commit to 50% if the survivors raise over $1,000, but if they raise over $5,000, their designated beneficiary will receive 80% with the remaining 20% going to support Team Draft’s mission to change the face of lung cancer.
Of this aspect of the Super Bowl Challenge, Dr. Camidge says, “you need somebody working on the national level. You need somebody working on the local level. Everybody wins.”
For the survivors who participate, the Super Bowl Challenge is so much more than just a fundraiser.
“Team Draft has really helped boost our family’s spirits during this challenging time,” says Dr. Lucy Kalanithi. In 2015, Lucy and her husband, Dr. Paul Kalanithi, won Team Draft’s inaugural Super Bowl Challenge and were able to join Team Draft in Phoenix, Arizona for Super Bowl 49. Paul went on to write the bestselling memoir When Breath Becomes Air — a powerful and moving chronicle of his life and lung cancer journey — before passing away at the age of 37.
2016 Super Bowl Challenge winner, Kim Ringen says, “As a lung cancer survivor, I would highly recommend to anybody to put your hat in the ring because it is so uplifting to be associated with a group of people that are coming together to make a difference.”
To learn more about Team Draft’s 2017 Lung Cancer Survivors Super Bowl Challenge, visit https://www.crowdrise.com/2017SuperBowlChallenge.
Special thanks to the Jon Wilmot and the Wilmot Family, NFL, Astra Zeneca, and all of our Team Draft supporters for helping make this experience possible.
About Team Draft
Team Draft, an initiative of the Chris Draft Family Foundation, is dedicated to raising lung cancer awareness and increasing research funding by shattering the misconception that lung cancer is a “smoker’s disease.” Despite the fact that between 20,000 and 30,000 people who have never smoked are diagnosed with lung cancer in the United States each year, the smoking stigma negatively impacts lung cancer research funding, Team Draft is out to change all that. To learn more about Team Draft, share your story, or make a donation, please visit www.teamdraft.org.

Dirk Bosgraf - 2017 Super Bowl Challenge Check Presentation - OSUCCC / Lungevity
2017-03-15 08:00 - 17:00
Columbus, OH. Lung cancer survivor-advocate Dirk Bosgraf chose OSUCCC and Lungevity as his beneficiary of the funds that he raised during Team Draft’s 2017 Lung Cancer Survivors Super Bowl Challenge.
Founded by Draft and his late wife Keasha, who died of lung cancer in 2011 at the age of 38, Team Draft is dedicated to raising lung cancer awareness and increasing badly needed research funding through its Campaign To Change The Face Of Lung Cancer, which is committed to shattering the misconception that lung cancer is a “smoker’s disease.” The centerpiece of Team Draft’s Campaign is its annual Lung Cancer Survivors Super Bowl Challenge.
As Draft explains, “the Super Bowl Challenge gives us a unique opportunity to use the overwhelming media coverage surrounding the Super Bowl as a platform to raise critical public awareness about lung cancer on an international level. With the game as a backdrop, we can use each survivor’s story to weave a broader narrative about the state of lung cancer and the hope that now exists for those battling the disease.” And Team Draft’s efforts are paying off.
“The Super Bowl Challenge achieves amazing things in terms of public awareness and changing perceptions about lung cancer,” says Dr. Ross Camidge, the Director of Thoracic Oncology at Colorado University Cancer Center, the cancer center where two of last year’s Super Bowl Challenge winners were treated.

In addition to raising critical public awareness, the Super Bowl Challenge also raises funds for lung cancer organizations and treatment centers across North America. Last year, participants who raised more than $1,000< during the Super Bowl Challenge were able to commit 50% of the funds they raised to a lung cancer organization or cancer center of their choice.
Thanks to the overwhelming success of our annual Super Bowl Challenge, Team Draft is maintaining its commit to 50% if the survivors raise over $1,000, but if they raise over $5,000, their designated beneficiary will receive 80% with the remaining 20% going to support Team Draft’s mission to change the face of lung cancer.
Of this aspect of the Super Bowl Challenge, Dr. Camidge says, “you need somebody working on the national level. You need somebody working on the local level. Everybody wins.”

For the survivors who participate, the Super Bowl Challenge is so much more than just a fundraiser.
“Team Draft has really helped boost our family’s spirits during this challenging time,” says Dr. Lucy Kalanithi. In 2015, Lucy and her husband, Dr. Paul Kalanithi, won Team Draft’s inaugural Super Bowl Challenge and were able to join Team Draft in Phoenix, Arizona for Super Bowl 49. Paul went on to write the bestselling memoir When Breath Becomes Air — a powerful and moving chronicle of his life and lung cancer journey — before passing away at the age of 37.
2016 Super Bowl Challenge winner, Kim Ringen says, “As a lung cancer survivor, I would highly recommend to anybody to put your hat in the ring because it is so uplifting to be associated with a group of people that are coming together to make a difference.”
To learn more about Team Draft’s 2017 Lung Cancer Survivors Super Bowl Challenge, visit https://www.crowdrise.com/2017SuperBowlChallenge.
Special thanks to the Jon Wilmot and the Wilmot Family, NFL, Astra Zeneca, and all of our Team Draft supporters for helping make this experience possible.
About Team Draft
Team Draft, an initiative of the Chris Draft Family Foundation, is dedicated to raising lung cancer awareness and increasing research funding by shattering the misconception that lung cancer is a “smoker’s disease.” Despite the fact that between 20,000 and 30,000 people who have never smoked are diagnosed with lung cancer in the United States each year, the smoking stigma negatively impacts lung cancer research funding, Team Draft is out to change all that. To learn more about Team Draft, share your story, or make a donation, please visit www.teamdraft.org.
