Lottery helps fund valuable trials for cancer patients

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on October 1, 2024.

Herald photo by Al Beeber Cancer patient Henry Aasman poses for a photo on a CT Scan machine in the Jack Ady Cancer Centre at the Chinook Regional Hospital.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

One of two Albertans will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes and 60 are diagnosed each day with the disease.

It’s expected that this year 23,000 new cancer cases in total will be diagnosed in Alberta alone.

Ryan Kelly of the Alberta Cancer Foundation says while a diagnosis can be devastating “huge leaps and bounds” are being made in the fight against the disease with breast cancer – which if now caught early – now being 90 per cent survivable for most people while prostate cancer has a survival rate in the high 80 per cent range.

“That wasn’t the case 15 years ago and that’s really directly the result of the full empathy and support of donors who have helped move that needle for people,” added Kelly.

“The Jack Ady Cancer Centre is such an important part of how we treat and support cancer patients in southern Alberta,” he said.

Statistics are pretty sobering,” he said.

“We try to do everything we can to support those patients end to end in their journeys,” he added.

Kelly expects the next decade will be really important for cancer care and research “so when people do something as simple as buy a lottery ticket they’re actually helping to fund some of our clinical trials research that happens in the province. And that really gives hope to people who have really complex, difficult cancers,” he said.

The foundation is presently running its Cash and Cars Lottery campaign which closes on Wednesday with the draw date scheduled for Oct. 15.

The 1,385 prizes include a $2.3 million dream home or $2 million cash and a $1.25 million home or $1 million cash. Tickets can be purchased at https://cashandcarslottery.ca/

Henry Aasman of Lethbridge knows full well the impact of cancer – he’s battling lung cancer himself and has lost three family members to the disease.

The 62-year-old Aasman, who is being treated at the Jack Ady Cancer Centre at Chinook Regional Hospital, knows how important research is and the equipment needed to treat patients.

Some of that equipment, as well as patient supports, is due to the fundraising efforts by the Alberta Cancer Foundation including its Cash & Cars lottery which has raised more than $41.5 million for research and patient care at Alberta’s 17 cancer centres since 2000. The foundation is the official fundraising partner for the province’s cancer centres.

Aasman has undergone 30 radiation treatments and 17 treatments with chemotherapy at the Jack Ady Centre. And he can’t speak highly enough about its staff and the way they treat patients.

When patients are going through treatment, they have to put their lives on hold, says Kelly, and can find themselves dealing with out-of-pocket costs as they battle with their diseases. And the Alberta Cancer Foundation can help them through financial assistance programs to help ease that burden.

In Lethbridge alone last year, the foundation gave out almost $80,000 to cancer patients to help offset some costs such as mortgage payments, groceries and other bills.

Dr. Charles Kirkby, the senior medical physicist at the Jack Ady centre, makes sure that the machines producing radiation are producing the right output and making sure the beam quality falls within certain parameters. He and his team also are responsible for the computers which help plan patients’ individual treatments.

Kirkby says staff “love” the cancer foundation which “provides us with a lot of funding for equipment, it provides us funding for education, for patient support.”

Aasman said in his case, a four-inch tumour grew three or four times but several weeks into his treatment it shrunk substantially.

He said staff were thrilled to see that “and you feed off of that.”

But with his tumour being so close to his heart, it affected his esophagus and for about six weeks after radiation treatment he had trouble swallowing. The last two weeks, he said, “have been great.”

Aasman first learned he had a tumour on April 8. He felt fine and kept working until the end of May but an infection in June “really hit me so I was in the hospital for about a week and then shortly after that I started treatments,” he said.

Aasman’s dad died at 58 of pancreatic cancer and his brother Tony died at 47. His sister Nell also succumbed to cancer at 48.

“When I heard the word ‘cancer,’ I thought death sentence which it has been in the past but I’m an optimistic guy. . .this staff here is incredible. Everybody’s so friendly, so professional, it’s been a great experience. Any time I’ve walked in this building, it’s top-notch. I’ve got nothing but good things to say about it. Everybody I’ve talked to in here have nothing but good things to say about it,” added Aasman.

“You feed off other people’s optimism, I definitely do,” he said.

“I put my faith in God and I put my faith in the people God has provided.”

When the cancer centre is able to update its equipment, software and available technology then it can create more precise plans for patients which can improve their experience because side effects have been minimized over the decades by improved quality and improved machine output, says Heather Giovannetti, manager of the radiation therapy department at the Jack Ady centre.

“Everything we do in radiation therapy has safety principles which are so important to us. We have to make sure we are treating our patients safely” and staff is always trying to get the radiation dose where it needs to be while minimizing side effects, adds Giovannetti.

Kirkby says a lot of promising work is being done in research. One of the biggest challenges with cancer is simply being able to see the disease, he says. The centre just got a new CT scanner that has software enhancements which helps staff better locate cancers.

Work is going on Calgary with machines that combine an MRI machine with a linear accelerator that produces therapeutic radiation, the advantage being that MRIs are the best bet to see soft tissue, says Kirkby. Some tumours are always moving and one strategy is to radiate a large area while a tumour moves in that area. With this other machine, the tumour can be followed while radiating which allows the radiation to be concentrated just on the tumour.

“We’re starting to see some clinical trials come out of this work… overall I think what we’re seeing with the trials is that this improvement in technology is translating into a very measurable and profound improvement in patient reported outcomes,” says Kirkby.