By Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com
“The walkers still amaze me. The stories I hear, every year there’s something that touches me.”
Founder Lucy Giuggio Carvalho was sitting in our small break room at Reminder Publishing, talking with Prime about the upcoming Rays of Hope: A Walk and Run Toward the Cure of Breast Cancer, slated for Oct. 21.
This year marks the 25th time breast cancer survivors, friends, family, volunteers and supporters have come together to make the five-mile trek to raise money to support breast cancer research, services and ultimately, a cure.
To date Rays of Hope has raised more than $14.2 million, all of which has stayed in Western Massachusetts to help fund programming and research to advance breast cancer detection and care.
It’s more than Carvalho – who was then fresh from her own diagnosis and treatment for stage 1 breast cancer – could have imagined or hoped for when she came up with the idea for the fundraising walk back in 1994.
A humble beginning
“I was so busy planning everything that first year, I don’t think I thought beyond getting through planning for the walk,” Carvalho told Prime. “I couldn’t see that far ahead, that it would be good to keep going.”
And going it has, reaching a milestone many fundraising walks and events could easily envy.
“They usually say fundraisers have a lifespan of about 10 years,” Carvalho said. “And it’s been 25 years, so I just think this is meant to be.
“I sit back and can’t believe that [this walk] has taken on a life of its own,” she continued. “It started with a commitment of 17 members; now thousands of volunteers work in order to make the walk happen. It just keeps evolving and getting better.”
A perfect synergy
You could say the impact of Rays of Hope is one of those situations where the stars aligned, which is how Dr. Grace Makari-Judson, co-director of The Rays of Hope Center for Breast Cancer Research at Baystate Medical Center, said she came to be involved with the walk and the powerful research arm it now funds, when Prime reached her in a phone interview.
A hematologist oncologist at Baystate Medical Center, she said she was on the short list of candidates being considered to head up a new breast cancer program the summer before the inaugural walk, and was appointed medical director of Baystate’s new Comprehensive Breast Center just weeks before the 1994 Rays of Hope event.
“I remember meeting Lucy [at the time] and she had some goals for the walk,” Makari-Judson, who also now chairs the Baystate Health Breast Network, Baystate Regional Cancer Program, said. “She was very inspiring in her goals of wanting to have coordinated [breast cancer] care in the Pioneer Valley and support research.”
Carvalho has said many times her own angst over choosing care for her breast cancer was the spark that ignited the idea for the first walk.
“The hardest part [of facing breast cancer] is deciding what to do,” she said. “Once you are diagnosed the whole next step is what to do.
“It’s not like cookie-cutter treatment,” Carvalho continued. “It depends on your [diagnosis]”
Making strides in care
Makari-Judson said one of the first things she did to improve breast cancer care was to create a breast care center where patients could go for breast imaging and image-guided needle biopsies.
“Twenty-five years ago when a woman came to get a mammogram, she came to the hospital and sat in a waiting room with people who had pneumonia who were waiting for a chest x-ray,” Makari-Judson said. “ If someone had an abnormal mammogram and needed a biopsy, she had to go to the operating room … it was surgery and since most breast biopsies are benign, she would be left with an unnecessary scar on her breast.”
Image guided biopsies were the first step in promoting a minimally invasive approach to breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. The Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy equipment that allowed most women with cancer to avoid a more extensive axillary surgery was funded by the then two-year old Rays of Hope walk. The year was 1996, and Baystate was the only area hospital with that capability for breast cancer patients.
Two years later, in 1998, Rays of Hope funded its first research project – allocating more than $21,000 to three Baystate researchers for breast cancer research.
These were but the first of many equipment purchases, programs, research and wellness initiatives funded by the annual walk during the past quarter-century. The research funding included promoting the clinical trials program at the cancer center, the development of the Radioactive Seed Localization program – now widely employed in breast cancer surgery – and a Western Mass.-based Breast Research Registry that reached over 1,000 participants in 2018.
Keeping it local
Though funding research had always been one of Carvalho’s goals for the walk – in the early years Rays of Hope gave 10 percent of the proceeds to the American Cancer Society for breast cancer research – keeping the money here was always paramount to her.
“I think money can go to research anyplace, but when you send it outside the area you never really know how it is being used,” Makari-Judson said. The money given to the Rays of Hope Center for Breast Cancer Research, she said, not only supports locally-based research, but through its Advocacy Council provides outreach that helps women understand what the research means to their treatment and health.
“These advocates go out into the community and explain why the research is essential [to care] and that is a unique structure,” Makari-Judson said.
Funding from Rays of Hope has also helped the Baystate Regional Cancer Program and the Baystate Breast and Wellness Center achieve Carvalho’s second goal of caring for the whole patient.
“Twenty-five years ago we were only looking at the patient from a medical point of view,” Makari-Judson said, adding at the time the program didn’t have the resources to offer emotional and spiritual care to women navigating their breast cancer treatment. Thanks to funding from Rays of Hope, breast cancer care and treatment now includes support groups, art therapy, yoga and water exercise classes, massage therapy, ongoing survivor wellness programs and even an award-winning survivor’s dragon boat team on the Connecticut River.
“The breadth and depth of what we can offer is enormously impacted by our partnership with Rays of Hope,” Makari-Judson said.
Every woman matters
For Denise Jordan, chair of the 25th Annual Rays of Hope Walk and Run Toward a Cure – and herself a nearly five-year breast cancer survivor – it’s that breadth and depth of care patients and their families receive while undergoing diagnosis and breast cancer treatment that truly made a difference.
“I really want to talk about the care,” Jordan told Prime during a phone interview in mid-September. “I know about the massages and the swimming, but for me, I want to talk about the care I received during radiation and chemotherapy, which is the kind of treatment no one looks forward to.
“The spirit of the staff at the D’Amour Center [for Cancer Care, home of the Baystate Regional Cancer Program], they are so caring. You can feel that when you are being treated there, they really go out of their way to see that the patients and their families are cared for under their treatment, and that is what I appreciate the most.”
The comprehensive, coordinated treatment approach used throughout Baystate Regional Cancer Program was developed at the original Comprehensive Breast Cancer Center, Makari-Judson said. It was another influence of Lucy’s vision for the impact of Rays of Hope.
“Twenty-five years ago people taking care of breast cancer patients didn’t work as a team,” Makari-Judson said. “We started the multidisciplinary breast-pathology conference model, putting breast pathologists, breast radiologists, breast surgeons, medical oncologists, radiation oncologists and nurses – the entire team – all in the same room to go over in detail what everything looked like under a microscope and on the films and together recommend the ideal treatment options [for the patient].”
Makari-Judson said this approach has become so successful; it is employed in the treatment of all solid cancers throughout the Baystate Regional Cancer Program.
When it comes to this year’s 25th anniversary walk, Jordan said her goal is to “continue all the great work that has been done before me,” and to “get a lot more people” involved in supporting the walk and recognizing the work of Rays of Hope.
“Anyone that donates, know that your money is going to help someone you know,” Jordan said.
Lindsey Bubar, who just completed her breast cancer treatment this past July, spoke to Prime about walking in Rays of Hope during her first year of treatment. Seeing all the survivors, and being surrounded by the support of her 80-member Lindsey’s Tribe walk team was, she said, truly inspiring.
“The special things they do for survivors at the walk every year, it’s really just a beautiful thing,” Bubar said. “The survivor tent is – you feel like you’re part of this club of just the most amazing, badass, strong, inspirational women, and to know that I’m put in a category and people think even a little bit of that of me, it’s just so amazing.”
She said she especially appreciated the support and direction Rays of Hope gave her parents, who organized her team for the 2017 event.
“Cancer doesn’t just happen to one person, cancer happens to the whole family the whole circle of friends, and Rays of Hope really helps supports that entire community of people who are impacted by it,” Bubar added.
Always walking for Hope
Carvahlo, who called the Rays of Hope Walk “a healing part of my life – without knowing it, it helps you through the process,” still marvels at the “miracle” that brought the first walk to life in 1994
“I think how people just embraced it,” Carvahlo said. “I had an idea to do a walk, but it was just an idea. I reached out and people were willing to give their valuable time, their money, they were so willing.
“People were empowered to make a difference, and the walk was that avenue,” she added.
And though her Rays of Hope Walk and Run Toward the Cure for Breast Cancer has already accomplished much of what she held in her original vision, Carvalho, who turned 64 in September, said she plans to continue to be there for every walk.
“There may be a day when I can’t walk the full five miles, but until then, I will,” Carvalho said. “I’ll even walk after there is a cure. There’s always work to be done.”
The 25th Annual Rays of Hope Walk and Run Toward the Cure of Breast Cancer takes place Oct. 21, beginning at Temple Beth El on Dickinson St. in Springfield.
Run registration opens at 7:30 a.m.; Run Toward the Cure 8K starts at 8:30 a.m. Walker registration opens at 9 a.m., walk steps off at 10:30 a.m.
Stage program begins at 9:45 a.m. Survivor Photo takes place at 10 a.m.
For more info visit www.baystatehealth.org/raysofhope
