Driving out ovarian cancer

You know the worst kind of cancer? It’s the kind that touches your family or kills someone you love.

That puts ovarian cancer at the top of my own list and maybe for many of you too.

A local family wants to raise all the money they can for ovarian cancer research and they hope thousands of you will help. It’s as easy as renewing your license tag.

“It is a sneaky cancer and most people do not know that there is no test for ovarian cancer,” said Stacy Miner with Drive Out Ovarian Canter. “There’s no screening test that can be performed.“

That’s the worst part. Often a woman isn’t diagnosed with ovarian cancer until she presents symptoms and already has it. 

In 2006, Brittany Waldrip died of ovarian cancer. She was younger than most women who are diagnosed and she was too young to die.

“It was very soon after we lost her that we knew that we needed to do something to help other people that were in our position or would be in our position one day,“ Miner said.

All you have to do to help is come here to your county courthouse or annex anywhere in the state of Alabama. 

There are many Alabama license tags that promote and support many worthwhile causes: support for Alabama wildlife, helping uninsured children in the state, curing childhood cancer, encouraging folks to choose life, and tags supporting Alabama forests and the beautiful Cahaba River. 

And now at any license branch you’ll find the latest: Drive Out Ovarian Cancer. More than 1,000 people have already signed up for the tag, and all the money raised will go to ovarian cancer research at UAB.

“What we try to do is to take every dollar that we actually raise and parlay that into projects that will get additional funding from other places like the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society,” said Dr. Ronald Alvarez of UAB gynecologic oncology. “It almost improves the return on that investment for every dollar that is actually given here in the state of Alabama.“

Of course it would be great to find a cure to all cancer…but for now it would be a huge step just to get women diagnosed earlier.

“The best thing that we can do is to help those researchers at UAB you know come up with a test for ovarian cancer,“ Miner said.

Every 1,000 Alabamians who ask for the ovarian tag will mean nearly $50,000 in research money. So, when you’re due to renew your tag, consider getting this new tag. It costs an extra $50, but you’ll be a part of driving out ovarian cancer from Alabama.