Young Widow Raises Cancer Awareness at NASCAR Races
Lori Hamilton, the 33-year-old widow of NASCAR champion Bobby Hamilton, Sr, is turning her grief into something positive by raising cancer awareness at racetracks around the country.
Lori’s husband died in 2007 of neck cancer at the age of 49. Lori says that neither she nor Bobby gave any thought to annual screenings before his diagnosis at 47. They also had no idea that more than 7,000 Americans die of head and neck cancers annually.
Bobby’s cancer was discovered when he went to see a dentist to get a wisdom tooth removed.
But now she knows early detection plays a crucial role in cancer survival and she’s spreading the word at locations where there’s plenty of people to listen to her message: NASCAR races. While she travels the circuit she speaks to race fans and visits surrounding clinics encouraging adults to get screened for head and neck cancers every year, raising awareness about the symptoms, and reassuring the reluctant that detection is easy and painless. At the Kansas Speedway, health professionals from the University of Kansas Hospital offered free cancer screenings before the start of the race. As Lori explains,
“At a racetrack, we have a captive audience of 80,000 people. If we can reach a third of them, maybe it can make a difference.”
Lori Hamilton
Head and Neck Cancer Awareness Advocate
A study conducted by Johns Hopkins University found HPV-related oral cancers alone nearly doubled between 1973 and 2004. If you’d like to learn more about head and neck cancers you can visit Cancer.Net, a web site containing information from the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
Source: CNN
Related Links: wsbt.com; KansasCity.com; NASCAR.com; The Yul Brynner Head and Neck Cancer Foundation; Mouth Cancer Foundation
Related Video: Lori Hamilton, Wife of NASCAR Legend Bobby Hamilton, Urges from myspacetv.com
Technorati Tags: cancer advocacy; otolaryngology; squamous cell carcinoma
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