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December 1, 2009
AT THE TABLE OF THANKSGIVING
It pays to look back as you gaze toward the future. During this past year, the first full year of the Breast Health & Healing Foundation, one thing stands out clearly; the greatest blessings were all surprises, each and every one. No matter what I planned for, or hoped for, what I received was surprisingly more than I expected.
Bill Flagg, Director of Public Relations for the Cary Medical Center in Caribou, Maine had been patiently listening to me talk about the mammary tumor virus for well over a year. (I secretly suspected that he was tired of hearing me go on about it. Little did I know how engaged he really was in this research.) Then one day in August he told me that he had access to a small amount of money that had been given by the Davis Family Foundation for research that could not be completed. He had asked the Davis Family Foundation if this money could be given to the Breast Health & Healing Foundation. They said yes. It was not a great deal of money, but it was enough to host the Breast Cancer Summit for the Pink Virus Project, the first of its kind meeting of scientists who are working on the mammary tumor virus. These few scientists have been struggling in their own quiet and underfunded laboratories, working away in small dark offices buried at the end of long dark corridors, in bleak buildings on medical campuses across the country. I thought it was time they got together, in public, to share their work with others. Surprise Number One: "found money" for the Breast Cancer Summit for the Pink Virus Project.
Bill Flagg and I flipped through our mental filing cabinet for ideas about where to host the summit. I knew I wanted it in Washington; I knew I wanted it on Capitol Hill; I knew I wanted Senator Collins, who hails from Caribou, to help us get a room somewhere in the Senate for this meeting. So I put forth my idea, and then Bill and I dug deep into our respective Rolodexes to see how we could make it happen. Surprise Number Two: our grand plan for the Breast Cancer Summit for the Pink Virus Project materialized and was held in the Senate Russell Building on October 9, 2009. As you know, it was a great success.
Surprise Number Three: the hospital where I work in New Jersey, the Clara Maas Medical Center, went out of their way to support the Summit, helping to defray some of the costs that exceeded the budget given by the Davis Family Foundation.
Surprise Number Four: a private donor, upon hearing of the Summit, made a very generous personal contribution to it, providing much more than financial support, he provided a heart-felt endorsement of the vision, mission and goals of the Breast Health & Healing Foundation.
An old friend of a friend from medical school, someone who has become a real rainmaker in Washington, said he would help guide me on my path through Capitol Hill in the days preceding the Summit. Surprise Number Five: not only was he was willing to help with a project that was so totally out of his field of expertise, but he did a masterful job of enlarging our field of influence in Washington, a gift that keeps on giving to this present day.
Surprise Number Six occurred the morning of the Summit when one of the invited guests, a researcher, asked to speak at the close of the scientific presentations. I had no idea what Dr. Fatah Kanshanchi would say, but it really didn’t matter. I have adopted the principle that the leader’s job is to direct the team and then let events unfold, and then direct again and let events unfold – all the time keeping the vision in mind for all to see and understand. However, I was surprised and deeply satisfied when Dr Kanshanchi said that upon hearing the data presented he was convinced that "we were on to something." As a highly respected research scientist, a rising star in the academic community, his remarks were a benediction for the work of the Pink Virus Project. (Of course, Dr. Kanshanchi's remarks don’t prove the case for the mammary tumor virus as one of the causes of human breast cancer – we will have to do a lot of work to provide the overwhelming evidence necessary to make our case conclusively – but his remarks added a big log to our fire.) And, now, Dr. Kanshanchi has joined our team and is helping us with our work.
Surprise Number Seven occurred later that afternoon. Alan Engelstad and Jennifer Latrobe, colleagues who I first met at the International Masters for Health Leadership at McGill University, had come down from Toronto to facilitate the afternoon strategic planning sessions and they brought with them a new colleague, Maggie Greyson, a gifted graphic artist/internet geek goddess who did a wonderful job creating a "virtual minutes" poster during the strategic planning sessions, and who subsequently accepted my offer to come on board and help us steer the Breast Health & Healing Foundation through cyberspace. Maggie was the answer to a pressing problem that we hardly had time to ask, Who would take charge of our growing presence on the Internet?
There have been at least five other surprises that have flashed across our brightening horizon since the summit, each one unfolding in its own way and adding to the evolutionary growth of the Breast Health & Healing Foundation. Now it is time to openly give thanks for all these surprises, and to acknowledge that these unexpected blessings were not events that could have been planned or orchestrated: they were pure gifts.
Of course, there have been a few unpleasant surprises. But I like to think of them in the same vein as falling off a bike at an early age. They were only temporary setbacks, ones that, if used properly, provide juicy opportunities to reflect, correct, reposition, learn, and improve one's skills.
The mission of the Breast Health & Healing Foundation has not changed: to discover the causes of breast cancer and to use that knowledge to prevent the disease. The vision has not changed: to work collaboratively across multiple stakeholder boundaries to get to these questions answered and begin to take whole portions of breast cancer off the table. The goal for the Pink Virus Project has not changed: to get an answer to the question, Does a virus cause breast cancer in women? and to do so within five years.
What has changed for me is my perspective on this work. I am convinced that the universe is unfolding in a surprisingly benevolent way so that the work of the Breast Health & Healing Foundation gains the traction and fuel it needs to fulfill its mission, consistent with its vision, and, in so doing, collectively arrive at its goal.
No surprise: it has been wonderful and fun, even with the few irregularities that we have encountered.
Thank you, everyone, for the surprises, the work, the support and the untold vistas you have provided during this amazing journey.
Regards,
Kathleen T. Ruddy, MD
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