Work Sample #6: "Nurse organizes lung cancer benefit"

There are some names nurses never expect to see on their list of patients.

Nurse Rebekah Tobin said she couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw her best friend’s name on the list.

Doctors diagnosed Tobin’s friend Annabelle Buckner with lung cancer in January. Tobin said she and her best friend were shocked because Buckner had never smoked a day in her life.

Tobin said she immediately decided she needed to do something for her friend, but didn’t know what. She and Buckner talked about it regularly.

Then, in July, Tobin received a text message from Buckner that said Buckner’s father had passed away from brain cancer.

“That was the thing that pushed me,” Tobin said.

She decided to organize the Lung Hill Run, which takes place at 8 a.m. Nov. 7 at Liberty Memorial, Kansas City, Mo.

Tobin ran regularly, so that seemed the ideal route to go. She got in touch with the Kansas City Running Co., which helps set up runs for causes.

Tobin said it was very time consuming at first, but that recently everything is “falling into place like it was meant to be.”

Tobin had 60 people registered to run by the end of October.

This is the first year of what Buckner and Tobin hope to be an annual event. Tobin said she wants to make sure that Buckner’s story gets out.

“The main message is that it is not a smoker’s cancer anymore,” Tobin said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more people die from lung cancer every year than from breast, prostate and colon cancer combined. About 90,139 men and 69,078 women died from lung cancer in 2005.

Tobin said that there remains a lot of ignorance regarding lung cancer, and the funding that goes towards research on a cure is minuscule. She said that people, including her, assume that all lung cancer patients are smokers. Therefore, people just shrug it off and talk about quitting smoking.

Tobin wants to get the message out and start raising more funds for better drugs and research.

The Lung Hill Run started at the Liberty Memorial in downtown Kansas City. Tobin said she and Buckner picked that spot because the course is more challenging and has many hills.

Tobin wanted to make the point that lung cancer patients have a hard time breathing all the time.

Buckner is now on her third treatment option, intravenous chemotherapy, after oral and radiation chemotherapy didn’t work. Her tumors are not shrinking, but they aren’t growing anymore, either.

Information about the run is available at sportkc.org/thelunghillrun. Participants also can register up until the morning of the race, from 7 to 8 a.m.

Printed in the Kansas City Nursing News. Find more nursing stories at kcnursingnews.com.