Blogs

Fighting Cancer - May 25, 2012

May 25, 2012 by Marc Strode, CEO
Folks,

In my last blog earlier this week, I made a mistake and accidentally gave credit to Gloria Ziegler for the Ancillary Community Employee Award when in fact it was Frank Hernandez from respiratory therapy who won the award. Frank, very sorry about that and didn't mean to steal your thunder!! Congratulations on being selected and for doing what you do in the Del Rio community to represent VVRMC.

Now I probably had Gloria on my mind because we were fresh off of Relay For Life, which she organized for us and had a huge hand in our success with that event. It was neat to open up the Saturday paper and see Sandy, cheryl and Alma on the front page in cape and dog in tote! Of that $80,000 raised, $14,000 of it came from us! I'm not sure how many either ran, walked or cheered but like so many other things we do, I was so impressed with the turn out and level of commitment. I walked for just a little bit on the 3 AM - 4 AM shift, and even then at that strange hour on Saturday morning we must have had 15 people hanging around and doin' their thing. Irvin was there at that point cooling off his shoes as I think he had walked some ridiculous amont of time and distance! Very cool.

Then on Monday we debuted our Cancer Resource Center w/ a Chamber Of Commerce Ribbon-Cutting where we were able to showcase our new community services. This to landed us on the front page of the newspaper. It also drew in about 50 people from out and about, including our Mayor. Services out of "the room" are free to the public and really are a help to patients diagnosed or who are fighting cancer, particularly for those without the means to do what they need to do. To date we have had 8 people use the services with very little promotion of what we are doing. We hope the press and recognition this week will raise awareness it's here. Great job to Marvin Wood, Hatali Breckenridge for coordinating the event and of course to our FNS staff for tasty treats and refreshments.

Keep the Spirit,
Marc