As you may know, we recently celebrated sisterhood and survivorship with Komen at the Annual Pink Promise Brunch. Here are Dr. Linda Harrison’s remarks from that morning:
On behalf of Diagnostic Imaging Centers I welcome you to the 17th Annual Pink Promise Brunch.
Today we celebrate sisterhood and the beauty of a promise. At the start, I’d like to first recognize the men in our presence today. We are a sea of pink and a crowd of beautiful femininity, but there are men amongst us today. Men who are breast cancer survivors; men who are those all-important support-givers to our breast cancer survivors; men who are healthcare workers; men who are Komen workers and Komen volunteers; and men who are researchers working to further our knowledge. So this morning, I start by formally saluting you, our men, and thanking you for joining in our celebration.
Because for much of the rest of the morning, the focus will be on sisters and sisterhood – and face it – you men can play so many roles – but sister is NOT one of them!
Sisters – there are sisters we are blessed to share a family and upbringing with and those who start as friends and grow to become sisters of our hearts. Both are equally important and equally a part of sisterhood.
I am blessed by sisters in my life. I have an older sister and she is perfect – beautiful inside and out – and as of September this year she will be a 3 year breast cancer survivor, thanks to the eagle eyes of my colleague, Dr. Jennifer Crawley.
You know by now my love of quotations – quotations from those whose words weave patterns that resonate. In researching for today’s remarks I was struck by the words of not a famous author or philosopher, but the words of the cartoonist, Charles Schultz. Yes, these are the words that resonated: “Big sisters are the crabgrass in the lawn of life!”. Yes, that’s’ it, my 10 year old inner self cheered – she’s perfect, my sister – perfectly annoying!
And yet, as you can imagine, my regression to my 10-year-old inner self was short-lived. What starts out as crabgrass quickly grows to become the beauty of the lawn and garden of life: the color, the joy, the caring, the laughter, the shoulder to cry on and the support to lean on when you need it most.
Because there’s something we know about sisters – they’ve got your back! You can count on a sister to be there – no matter the hour, no matter the need.
Which brings us to promises – promises and the birth of Komen in 1982. Imagine – all of this- the immense impact of Komen on the lives of women in Kansas City and across our nation – all the beautiful culmination of a promise between sisters to do everything possible to end breast cancer.
What an amazing gift, that promise between sisters. It has generated an entire movement of awareness, made breast cancer a thing to be talked about, and has raised more than $2.5 billion dedicated to the promise. Dollars which support research nationally, helping to further our knowledge of this complex disease and to improve the lives of women affected by breast cancer. It has resulted in $10 million locally being fed into our greater Kansas City community– providing amazing services like: funding of screening mammography for women who otherwise would not have the means or opportunity for screening; funding education and outreach efforts directed to those in our community who face unique barriers to screening; funding navigator programs like the one at Truman Medical Centers, helping those women who face breast cancer amid poverty and cultural barriers navigate that roller-coaster ride of treatment and recovery. And that’s just the short-list!
So today on this beautiful spring day in May, we at Diagnostic Imaging Centers are here once again. We are here as presenting sponsors, looking forward to the inspiration of our speaker, Dr. Shari Prentiss. We are here because we share the vision of a world without breast cancer. We long for a world where breast cancer is diagnosed easily and accurately with a simple test and one where breast cancer is treated 100% successfully, 100% of the time with a pill with side effects no more unpleasant than those of an aspirin. This is our hope and dream – that our children or maybe our children’s children will never need fear breast cancer. We pray for the day when not one more woman or man dies from breast cancer.
Diagnostic Imaging Centers is a unique radiology group, not only in Kansas City but across the country. We are locally owned, all outpatient and run by the doctors you see in our 6 offices across the greater Kansas City community. We work for the health and well-being of those with whom we share this great city. We do things a little differently, keeping our focus on imaging done the way we would want to be treated if we were the patient.
We encounter women facing the journey of breast cancer daily- whether she is at the start of her journey or a long-term survivor. We are committed to meeting the needs of these women and all our patients with caring and compassion. We have wonderful employees whose goal is to make the whole process of undergoing stressful imaging less stressful – from our smiling front desk personnel, to the caring and competent technologists, to the behind the scenes staff and administration that keep us on the right track to the doctors making the interpretation – we are all committed to putting care into health care.
Today we at Diagnostic Imaging Centers are so proud to be a sponsor of this day celebrating sisters and promises. We have come so far – but there is still much work to be done to fulfill that special promise between sisters.
Here’s to sisters and promises – we thank you for joining us in today’s special celebration.
(Image Credit: My beautiful sisters by Ellyn Rivers via Wikimedia Commons Copyright Creative CommonsAttribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0))
Diagnostic Imaging Centers blogs on regularly about women’s health atwww.mammographykc.com and general radiology atwww.diagnosticimagingcenterskc.com. Visit our sites for more helpful information!
Filed under: Dear Readers, DIC news, Komen, News
