[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Welcome back to another episode of Just say Something podcast. My name is Philip Clark and I'm the CEO here at Just say Something. And before we get going with today's guest, I want to be sure to remind you to please, like, share, subscribe and comment.
[00:00:29] Speaker C: Always have to make sure I, I get all of those in.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: So today we have special guests with us.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: Of course, all of our guests are special and we appreciate you ladies being here. But we have Melissa. I'm sorry, Melissa. And Denise from Tanner's Hope. So welcome.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: So for our listeners, tell us what Tanner's Hope is.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Okay.
Well, I'm Denise, this is Melissa, and we're sisters. We started Tanner's hope in 2023 in memory of our dad, who passed away in 2020 from glioblastoma brain cancer.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: And we decided that we wanted to help other families going through the same horrible diagnosis that he went through.
And so we raised money and raised funds for those families.
[00:01:22] Speaker C: Okay. Is it to that specific type of cancer?
[00:01:28] Speaker A: No. Any kind of brain cancer, brain tumor, any kind of.
Even metastatic, even if it spreads to the brain, start somewhere else.
So we're small, so if we grow, we may have to put some rules. But right now it's any type of brain cancer tumor.
[00:01:47] Speaker C: Okay. And so as part of that, are you able to, what are some of the services or what do you provide those families that are going through this at this difficult time? What's. What does that look like from your perspective, from your end?
[00:02:05] Speaker D: Most of our families travel for.
We hope that they should be traveling. As wonderful as our hospital systems are here in Greenville and in the upstate, we have no neuro oncology.
The closest neuro oncology that we have is in Charleston musc, which is where our dad treated.
And during the year that we, that he was treating, we realized that we were blessed that we were able to take time off work, we were able to have gas money, we were able to have hospital, we were able to have hotel money for hotels during, during those treatment days. But then we really realized that there may be folks that don't.
And when it's something that, you know, they may hear, you need to be here for six weeks, eight weeks, that sort of thing, it just truly can add up.
Again, we, we want folks to have the capability that not be a limitation.
[00:03:08] Speaker C: Right.
[00:03:09] Speaker D: That they can't go and see specialists because of the travel concerns.
[00:03:14] Speaker C: Right. And these days, the, you know, there's so many barriers that would keep a family from being able to fully participate in the Care of a loved one like y' all were able to. That's great. That's great.
I know a lot of people probably don't hear a lot about brain cancer.
I know I've had a friend that died from brain cancer.
Is it more common in this area or what is that like in our community?
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Well, we have heard through one of our beneficiaries that Dr. Friedman, who was a world renowned physician at Duke, that he calls the Greenwood, Spartanburg, Anderson area Tumor alley.
And they see lots of patients from this area at Duke.
So we don't know if it's environmental, you know, don't know what. But there are many from this area.
We rarely meet anyone and tell them who we are, what we do that they don't say, hey, I had a neighbor that died of that, or there's somebody in our church or.
And it is becoming more and more common.
Don't know why so.
[00:04:32] Speaker C: And I know a lot of people equate cancer with smoking and tobacco use. Did your father smoke or use any
[00:04:40] Speaker A: type of tobacco Many, many years ago when we were children, he smoked a little bit. But we also had an uncle that died in 2006. Six with the same brain cancer, different side of the family as my mom's brother. And he, he never smoked.
And that's one thing about the brain cancer.
It's. We're seeing it happen more and more with younger people, more women, more children, so they don't know the, the cause.
And it hits, you know, it can hit anyone.
[00:05:18] Speaker C: Right? Right. Doesn't matter what your zip code is.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:05:21] Speaker C: It's a lot of what we say, especially about addiction because a lot of people that didn't happen in our neighborhood.
Yeah, it does.
Cancer. And cancer is just it, it's not a four letter word, but it could be a four letter word. It's just that thing that. It just makes you cringe when you hear that.
Just because we do know that so many people in our community do suffer through that. I was very surprised when you shared earlier that there's not a place here in Greenville thinking that, hey, I thought we had it all here in Greenville. But knowing that Charleston is the only place in the state.
So I guess part of that too is what symptoms did your dad have that make him something's not right?
[00:06:17] Speaker D: He, for a couple of weeks kind of thought something wasn't right.
And it happened on a Saturday.
He finally told her mom, who was his best friend in the whole wide world.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: I'm.
[00:06:33] Speaker D: I don't know where I'm going, but I'm going somewhere today.
And she was like, why are we doing this on a Saturday? Like your, your regular doctor's not open, blah, blah, blah.
[00:06:41] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:42] Speaker D: And it kind of continued to progress. By the time that he had gotten to the hospital, it was almost like stroke like symptoms.
[00:06:50] Speaker C: Oh, wow.
[00:06:51] Speaker D: He wasn't being able to communicate. He wasn't communicating with her. He was thinking, like after we talked to him, after the fact, he thought he was saying things to her, but there was no communication and all of that. It just. And then it kind of subsided. And then it was like, okay, now what, what, what am I doing here? What's wrong? Type of thing.
So many people that we hear, oftentimes their initial symptom is a, is a seizure of some, of some type, an aura or a full grandma, you know, seizure. That's very prevalent as far as. And we've heard a lot of folks who thought that they were having a stroke as well.
[00:07:35] Speaker C: Okay. As you're providing this help, how many people or how many families do you typically help in a year?
[00:07:47] Speaker D: We were actually talking about that earlier today.
Strangely enough, whether it has been us going through full fledged doing fundraising for folks or if it's just having a conversation, maybe telling them some different information about, you know, maybe you need to do this as far as trying to find a second opinion or sometimes just being there and listening to them.
[00:08:11] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:11] Speaker D: But again, we've been around for about three years and we are on, I think we counted today, we're on the 31st person.
[00:08:21] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:08:22] Speaker D: this point in time.
So, I mean, it has been about 10 a year.
Yeah, but.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: And I'm sure that, I mean, we're new. Not a lot of people know about us.
You know, we do things like this, get our name out.
You know, we did a spot on WLFJ radio. We had someone contact us that heard us on radio.
So the more we can get our name out.
[00:08:47] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: You know, we'll. I'm sure there's families out there that need us, but they just don't know about us.
[00:08:53] Speaker C: So how do they get in touch with you?
[00:08:55] Speaker D: The easiest thing to do is tannership.org we have, we have all of our contact information on there or folks can email
[email protected] but I mean, we've, we've fielded stuff just even through social media.
So if we, if we see something come over, we absolutely will reach out. So, and kind of our process or what we like to do is we actually do even have an application on our website. If folks want to go ahead and just kind of get a lot of their information out to us.
Um, but we. We try to take a time to do like a conference call and just kind of see where we can plug in and what the things are, where the immediate needs are at that. At that point in time.
[00:09:40] Speaker C: So how long your dad's treatment was, what, for a year.
[00:09:44] Speaker D: He passed away a year to the day of his diagnosis.
[00:09:49] Speaker C: And so with people who are just being diagnosed, you're able to help them with some forward thinking of.
Because I'm sure that's a shock. And then when reality sets in, you don't know what. You don't know when you have to go through that process.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:10:10] Speaker C: What were some of the steps, if you're willing to share of what you found out that you needed to do that maybe you hadn't done to help some of the others along that path?
[00:10:25] Speaker A: I would absolutely. Number one, and nothing negative about the Greenville hospital systems or anything, but number one, second opinion. Go to Duke, go to musc, go to Emory.
We've had clients that traveled to Houston, Texas, to MD Anderson.
They're just not equipped in Greenville to take care of brain tumors and brain cancer.
[00:10:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: You know, but absolutely get a second opinion. What now after that, you know, after you talk to someone at one of these hospitals, you still don't, you know, want to travel, then, you know, that's fine.
But I would absolutely suggest you get your scans to them, you know, have the doctors talk.
But MUSC has wonderful, wonderful surgeons and oncologists and the. They worked well with Gibbs Cancer center here. Our dad did our radiation is radiation at Gibbs.
[00:11:25] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: That was overseen by the doctors at nuc. They work together and they. I'm sure they do that quite often, you know, with patients all over the state.
[00:11:35] Speaker C: Sure, sure. They would have to.
What is something going into this, looking back, that you wish you knew going into it, that you didn't realize or think of until afterwards?
[00:11:56] Speaker D: I truthfully can say, if things happen now with our dad versus what happened in 2020, the first thing is, is we felt really alone.
The one thing that nobody could change is this was all happening during COVID Oh, boy.
[00:12:13] Speaker C: That added a different layer.
[00:12:15] Speaker D: A different layer. I mean, our dad was so well, you know, so well loved and stuff, and folks didn't want to visit, you know, and that was for really, his benefit more than anything else. And that's one thing that really couldn't have been changed. But we found out so many things about national organizations that we work with now that we had no clue existed. And in 2020.
[00:12:39] Speaker C: Oh, wow.
[00:12:40] Speaker D: Which is a lot of where we do our advocacy. We're actually heading up to D.C. next weekend to do our advocacy work with the National Brain Tumor Society. But they have caregiver conversations that they have all the time.
They do a lot of stuff that is virtual, which would have been perfect during COVID as well. But, I mean, we. We felt alone, and there are so many other folks that are going through these battles and where we kind of learned just even in friendships that we've made after losing daddy. But to know that we possibly could have had those connections during his fight would have just made things so much better, I'm sure.
Yeah. I mean, the one thing definitely is just connections and knowing that there are those options out there.
[00:13:28] Speaker C: What are some of those national organizations that y' all found out about afterwards?
[00:13:34] Speaker D: National Brain Tumor Society is definitely one of them.
The national network.
The one thing that they do, and that's one thing that we, you know, try to tell our folks when we speak to them, is reach out to them. They work hand in hand as far as getting all of the scans and everything. And then they're actually trying to help plug you into clinical training trials, second opinions, and they do everything free of charge.
[00:14:03] Speaker C: Oh, wow.
[00:14:04] Speaker D: So they're based out of Florida, but they actually have nurse navigators. The one that we work with specifically is in Charleston. But I mean, like I said, we. We never knew that those options existed. There's actually a young lady that has the packed AI she works. She has worked to make a.
Basically kind of a database that works with your. My chart to help me find clinical trials that wasn't around in 2020. She's amazing and things she does, but, I mean, there's.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Her dad passed away from glioblastoma as well, and so she's trying to help other families navigate clinical trials. Because if you go to clinical trial.gov, it's just.
[00:14:50] Speaker C: I mean, it's going to be massive.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: It's massive. And unless you're, you know, know, a doctor, you don't understand the terminology. She's created a website to help families navigate and try to find a clinical charm.
[00:15:03] Speaker C: Okay. Are you connected to her website?
[00:15:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:06] Speaker C: Okay. All right, cool.
And give us your website one more time.
[00:15:11] Speaker D: It is www.tanners.org.
[00:15:16] Speaker C: and so if there's one thing that we haven't said today that you would like for our listeners to know about Tanner's Hope or about you all, what would that be?
[00:15:31] Speaker A: Well, ME is brain tumor awareness month.
[00:15:36] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: And we have lots of things going on in Maine, but our, our main fundraiser for the year. We have three. Three main fundraisers, but our biggest one for the year is. Is in May goes May 1st through the 31st. We have an online auction.
There's a link to that on our website.
[00:15:55] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:15:55] Speaker D: There will be on May 1st,
[00:16:00] Speaker A: we start at the beginning of the year going to local businesses and you know, asking for donations. And so I believe we're up to 70, 75.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Awesome.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: So.
Yep. So we've got everything from gas gift cards to handmade pottery, kind of wooden bowls to trips to thing at Churchill Downs.
There's. There's just all. There's something for everyone on. On the auctions.
[00:16:32] Speaker C: Okay. Okay. So that, that's live and good to go. Made first through the 31st.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:16:39] Speaker C: Okay. So this will likely air in May and so just make sure that our. Our listeners know tannershope.org their auction is listed on your website.
So that's one of your fundraisers. What are your other ones?
[00:16:58] Speaker A: We have. We. We kind of started doing. It's called the Field of flags.
For July 4th, our parents have this beautiful farm and big white fence out in front of the farm. And so for July 4th, we're putting American flags.
People can sponsor American flag for $5 and we'll put one out there with our name on. It can be. Doesn't have to be a veteran. It can be. It could be anyone.
And with flaggers flags the whole week of July 4th.
Last year we started. It's in connection with that, a farm K, which is our version of a 5K at the farm.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: That's at the end of June, June 28th. And then in the fall, we have a car show.
Cars for Cars for a cure.
[00:17:53] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: And that's in September.
[00:17:55] Speaker C: Okay. Is that at the farm as well?
[00:17:58] Speaker A: No, we haven't found our home home yet. We've had it a couple times at a local church.
This year it's going to be at
[00:18:07] Speaker D: Bible Baptist on Harrison Bridge right here.
[00:18:10] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:18:10] Speaker D: We really like to try to stay within that Golden Strip area. Her dad was from Golden Strip. And so we. This is our first year. We've moved from Fountain Inn to Simpsonville, but it's just a couple miles away.
[00:18:23] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. That whole area is just interconnected.
[00:18:27] Speaker D: It is.
[00:18:29] Speaker C: Well, I appreciate y' all being with us today and I appreciate you sharing your story.
It's important that others hear that because just as you realized you're not alone, there's families out there that are suffering and they don't know where to go.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:18:47] Speaker C: And so hopefully we've been able to shed some light on that today. And so it's tanners hope.org and I want to thank both of you for being here with us today and sharing your story.
[00:19:03] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:19:04] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: Thank you for being here.
[00:19:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: And that will do it for this week's episode. Again, my name is Philip Clark, and I want to thank you for being with us. I want you to also remember to, like, share, share, subscribe and comment.
But the one thing you can do is go to tanners hope.org and check out their auction items and see if there isn't something that might appeal to you that you can bid on.
[00:19:33] Speaker C: Thanks again for being here.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: And we will see you next time. Until then, stay safe.
