It"s Pink Saturday!! Only on Sunday!!

Hi there, I know I'm a day late...But it's not my fault...I was away on very important business...not my work, but my life's work...I was in Dallas attending the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium (TBCRC) annual face to face meeting of the Patient Advocate Working Group (PAWG). The PAWG met the day before the TBCRC meeting as a whole began, and then we mixed in and attended the other working groups as patient advocates among the research scientists. I attended as the patient advocate representative of The Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Breast Center to the TBCRC.

More on that later in the post...But first, Don't you just love the picture? It takes me away...I also have another one for you...But I will further explain the above endeavor first...The TBCRC is a collaborative effort of Breast cancer centers of excellence from around the country that are working together within this organization to conduct research across organizations in order to come closer to a cure for breast cancer. This cooperative effort with regard to clinical trials and research, enables the centers to enroll the patients needed for participation in trials more quickly and to actually reach the number of people needed to make the research meaningful. These trials are only the research projects that are undertaken by the TBCRC. The TBRC collaborative effort  allows the researchers from these institutions to work together and to bounce ideas off of each other and to come together through two meetings a year and monthly conference calls. Through all of this there are Patient advocate representatives, ideally from each institution involved, that also have an equal voice, that speak for the layman, the patient, if you will...

What I have explained here is a very simplified and hopefully, mostly correct, version of a very complicated organization.

It is a beautiful thing, this organization to which I now belong. I am fortunate to have been selected this past summer to represent Johns Hopkins within the TBCRC.
I consider this to be an honor. I used this meeting to chose

the working groups to which I will belong and those are the calls that I will join each month in addition to the PAWG calls.

So that Ladies is why my contribution to Pink Saturday comes on Sunday! Please forgive me? Oh, the picture at the right? I think our organization is sort of like this...when all is said and done...all of our separate pink efforts will come together to form a beautiful PINK whole! My work on this is done with a group of wonderful, inspiring, intelligent women, and I sometimes look around the table and wonder how I ended up among them...
Don't even get me started on the fact the we walk among the scientists with great respect shown toward us. It is good , it is Pink!

Happy Pink Saturday! Sunday!

PS...Sorry no green...
Won't you join us?http://howsweetthesound.typepad.com  just click that link and find the rest of the lovely offerings of Pink Saturday hosted by Beverly at How Sweet the Sound...