Day #23 – Friday
July 8th, 2016 Orlando, FL
to Tampa, Fl
Today started out earlier because we had an hour and a half
drive to Tampa, Florida for our visit to Moffitt Cancer Center. We arrived at Moffitt a little early, so we
charged my camcorder and relaxed till our contact Lisa arrived. It was so great
putting a face to the name and the voice. Because our camcorder didn’t charge
overnight due to a faulty wall plug, we left my camcorder to charge while we
toured the facility with Lisa. With my camera phone in hand we walked across
from the Research building to the Clinic. She showed us different areas of the
center. Our first stop was their resource center. I recorded the room of
resources, as Ann, the head of the resource center talked about it. Their room
was filed with resources by cancer type, computers patients could use and they
would have social workers come help patients one on one as well. While we were
there, we met one of the Moffitt Social workers, we immediately connected. We
spoke briefly about financial needs and how many of their clients needed more
support for transportation – gasoline and rides to treatments! This isn’t the
first time we’ve heard this. We’ve actually heard this time and time again!
From there we headed back to the Research building to meet with 2 of the head
researchers for Breast cancer and Melanoma.
The first researcher we connected with was Eric Lau, whose
focus was on Melanoma. We immediately connected when he and I discussed
healthier eating and how he had just purchased a tower garden for his home, to
grow organic food in his home. We talked a lot about healthier eating while I
was there, but we also talked about his current research projects and how they
had found a cell that could help in the fight of cancer, a natural sugar found
in seaweed called Fucose. Eric, who is one of the young researchers at Moffitt
had received an award of $100,000 to use for his research study with a team of
about 5 other researchers in his lab at Moffitt. Eric told us that he didn’t
know about Moffitt, until they contacted him, he had been living in Sa Diego
and loved the fact that Moffitt wanted young researchers to help them in
research, he jumped at the opportunity!! We even visited his lab and briefly
met his team of young researchers.
Stories and poetry written by patients are shared through this book in the resource book. 
One of the awesome Moffit Social Workers!
After meeting with Eric, he brought us to meet another head
researcher, Dr. Brian Ruffell. Dr. Brian Ruffell was another young researcher
at Moffitt, except he focused on Breast Cancer research. He told us what
brought him to Moffitt, what he loved about his job and what he was working on.
He showed us his lab as well and we got some great footage of him. After, Lisa
led us back to the clinic to show us a special room – the Arts in Medicine
room, which ended up being my favorite room! The Arts in Medicine room was an
area of healing, a vibrant room full of fun and color. It was a fabulous room
of crafts. As we walked in I was drawn to all the handmade items throughout.
The origami cranes and hearts, the paintings displayed on the walls, the
various styles of artwork available for patients from watercolor to string
painting, coloring mandalas to Zentangle art and more. Clay art was displayed
as well as other forms of art throughout the room. It definitely is a safe and
fun place for those with cancer, their family and even the employees at
Moffitt.
By the end of the day, I didn’t want to leave but we had more
to do including heading to where we were staying, with my friend June in Tampa
and getting ready for another TV interview, this time with an affiliate of NBC.
We drove to June’s house and I was excited because I hadn’t seen her in 5 years
since our last cross country trip. Ok here’s how I met June: in 2009, when we
held our first date auction, the one that allowed me to start UCAAN, we
auctioned off a date with Dean Cain (Superman, Vendetta, A Wish come True,
etc), June was the winner of the date and she came out from Tampa to have lunch
with Dean Cain at Boccaccio’s in Westlake Village, Ca. June and I became
friends from there and when we took our first cross country trip in 2011, June
hosted Sarah and I at her home. It was so wonderful meeting her and staying connected
over these years!
After a short rest at June’s home, Doryn and I got ready and
headed out to Channel 8 news at 8pm on this NBC Affiliate station. I met with
News Anchor Jenn Holloway and did the interview, while It wasn’t live, it was still
fabulous. Next, Jenn gave us a tour of the studio, which was very cool to see.
She brought me to the media wonder Jeanette A who got me on the show. It was
wonderful meeting everyone at the station for sure! Thank you everyone for
making us feel so welcome! I think I loved the fact that Jenn Holloway loved my
interview and my outlook on life with cancer. After that Doryn and I headed
back to June’s house, where we ordered Chinese food in. We enjoyed a nice dinner, all watched Patch
Adams, had some fruit with Vanilla Ice Cream and headed to bed. I am looking
forward to a day in Tampa with June tomorrow, as I bought passes on Groupon for
a journey to the Primate park near here. We’re all going to enjoy monkeys,
chimps and even tropical birds! Sounds like a fabulous day to me!!
View
the Intro and the video of my interview here:
On a side note: We’ve become experts at living out of a
suitcase and how best to load and unload the car – every time we get faster.
Every day another city or another state, we just keep going…… but it’s all an
experience in some cases a life changing one, because we get to experience a
piece of what it’s like to live in a small town or a big city. There have been
some days where we stayed more than a day and for that I’m beyond thankful to
experience more of what these towns have to offer and to have an opportunity
for chance meetings wherever we go. Here’s to more experiences, more meetings
and more stories!
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